81–90 of 318 posts
One of the best things that I’ve done for myself, career-wise, came during a 6-month sabbatical between jobs. I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to do, but I kept finding myself stymied by scope creep - when you don’t have any constraints, it’s hard to decide how big a project should be, and the projects would grow to these massive unfinishable beasts. I decided to constrain myself to one week per project - what…
> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate. I get where this is coming from, and I even agree with it today, but I also want to tag it as "don't cache this opinion too hard". It's interesting to notice when and how our…
This is by far my most common usage of LLMs, and they’re good at it. Sometimes you have to be intentional about preventing it from being sycophantic and just telling you that you’re right, through a system prompt or by phrasing the question such that it’s comparing ideas neutrally instead of comparing “your” idea to some other idea. It feels like Claude and ChatGPT have both become more sycophantic over the past mont…
One of the best things that I’ve done for myself, career-wise, came during a 6-month sabbatical between jobs. I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to do, but I kept finding myself stymied by scope creep - when you don’t have any constraints, it’s hard to decide how big a project should be, and the projects would grow to these massive unfinishable beasts. I decided to constrain myself to one week per project - what…
I would just add that gen AI can actually be a fantastic aid when you're building some toy projects just for yourself. I am primarily a backend engineer, though I am capable on the front end, just not particularly fast. I am especially slow at the voodoo that is CSS. In the past, I would have been turned off from doing some end-to-end personal projects because I know I would have been bogged down just battling CSS fo…
I'm the opposite of you (my strength is in voodoo) but my experience is the same. Whereas before I'd spend 2-3 weekends getting bogged down on elements that aren't my strengths and never complete, now I can easily whip up a mostly functioning web app (just for me) in just a few hours.
Toy Software is a lot like working on your bike/car/boat/whatever. Working on your bike is fun. Working on the bike you need to ride to work tomorrow is stressful. I miss writing toy software. It’s fun. But inevitably I want to use said software and that’s where the trouble starts. You find all the bugs and none of the time to fix them.
I dunno. Working on a bike you want to use to ride to work could be stressful if it is your only bike, you need it to get to work, and your manager will be really mad if you don’t show up to work one day. If there was any slip available it wouldn’t be so bad. Actually, I really like this analogy because 1) We can’t really work on non-trivial fixes for our cars because they are too complex 2) We’ve totally structured…
If my bike flats and I'm out of tubes and I have a busy day planned, I have to take it to a local bike shop but those generally close pretty early. If I miss the window to take it to an LBS then I'm SOL. With a car there's generally a developed enough ecosystem that I can get a roadside assistance type service to put a spare on the car until I can actually get my car into a shop.
This is a good analogy for SaaS vs using a tinkerer tool. A tinkerer tool often can be customized exactly to your needs. I can work on my bike at 10 PM in my garage after dinner as long as I have the parts. But sometimes your tinkerer tool is going to leave you working all night or you'll be SOL. But SaaS is generally a full-time job for other folks. Sure you pay money, but there's fewer situations you're SOL.
(Personally when my bike is inop and I need to head to work I use transit.)
I can't afford much n the way of software, so I've been trying to learn to make do with FOSS.
> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…
> Now with LLMs, I simply prompt the same with a little bit more of context "pros and cons of using mysql vs mongodb when storing photos. Link references". In near future, companies will probably be able to pay lots of money to have their products come up better in the comparison. LLMs are smart enough to make the result seem "organic" -- all verifiable information will be true and supported by references, it will on…
Vibe coding via Claude has re-ignited my passion for fun, side programming projects. After a few false starts, I figured out the tooling, processes and in just a few weeks I've built several apps and I'm having new ideas consistently: -Family calendar/weather dashboard -Bluesky reader that allows you to hide posts you've "seen" -Work PM dashboard to make time tracking more gamified and dare I say... fun? -Chrome Redd…
> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…
> Now with LLMs, I simply prompt the same with a little bit more of context "pros and cons of using mysql vs mongodb when storing photos. Link references". In near future, companies will probably be able to pay lots of money to have their products come up better in the comparison. LLMs are smart enough to make the result seem "organic" -- all verifiable information will be true and supported by references, it will on…
> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…
I'm sure I'll keep buying commercial games from companies with reasonable terms (GOG, maybe?). But writing my own is great fun. It'd be nice if someone else enjoys them, but they're mainly for my own enjoyment.
Oh, and I "vibe code" the old fashioned way: with a REPL and some chill tunes.