Nostr notes by Sue Smith

Didn't see this at the time but it's currently doing the ...

2026-06-12T10:18:59+02:00

Didn't see this at the time but it's currently doing the rounds on linkedin

"The AI engineering impact data shows that output is up. It also shows that the work required to ensure that output is safe, correct, and maintainable has not decreased. It has increased substantially."

Aye if only anyone could have foreseen this etc

https://www.faros.ai/blog/ai-acceleration-whiplash-takeaways

Absolutely wild to see this and the reactions to it, we must be ...

2026-06-10T11:14:12+02:00

Absolutely wild to see this and the reactions to it, we must be entering the stage where everyone pretends they never thought it would speed things up in the first place

https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116724214815495661

but we should totally look the other way at that and print ...

2026-05-28T10:30:52+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…lg8l
_________________________

but we should totally look the other way at that and print whatever other shite they come out with next as though it were news and not marketing

It's almost like they.. don't understand what people ...

2026-05-28T10:30:27+02:00

It's almost like they.. don't understand what people actually do or how organisations work and were.. talking complete shite this whole time 🤡

https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/sam-altman-dario-amodei-walking-back-ai-jobs-apocalypse-prophecies-ipo/

Cartoon villain shenanigans aside my favourite part of this is ...

2026-05-21T12:01:25+02:00

Cartoon villain shenanigans aside my favourite part of this is the attribution of managers as measurers, tell me you have a dreadful management culture without telling me etc

Coupled with the removal of *checks notes* every function involved in managing legal risk and accountability and the levels of fucking around are unreal, these folk clearly think consequences are a thing of the past

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-i-choose-which-cloudflare-employees-to-replace-with-ai-40a197e5

Took a mere two months for this one to manifest lol ...

2026-05-13T18:27:38+02:00

Took a mere two months for this one to manifest lol

This one prompted a blog post ...

2026-05-07T13:32:39+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…9a9v
_________________________

This one prompted a blog post https://www.sue.codes/blog/convenienceunderstanding/

I've posted about this before but messaging from the scottish ...

2026-05-07T11:24:33+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…urwa
_________________________

I've posted about this before but messaging from the scottish greens was the first time I saw climate justice, social justice, and racial justice reflected as hand in hand with one another in rhetoric from an actual political party

Climate crisis and colonialism are the same story

Well I can't vote green in the constituency vote so am going ...

2026-05-07T11:19:07+02:00

Well I can't vote green in the constituency vote so am going snp + green for the regional list

It feels good to cast at least one vote for something that actually reflects how I see the world, and I'll settle for pro independence across the board

Naturally fuck reform, the tories, and labour

There is some compulsion in software where automation breeds more ...

2026-05-01T15:33:14+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…zppp
_________________________

There is some compulsion in software where automation breeds more automation and we accidentally leap over the phase where it was actually optimal for both usefulness and understanding.

Something I find myself doing a lot right now is writing little ...

2026-05-01T15:31:52+02:00

Something I find myself doing a lot right now is writing little local scripts to generate web pages from data using e.g. templating libraries rather than full blown generated static site frameworks or whatever. Feel like I'm searching for some lost stage we skipped past where we had handy abstractions to automate making websites without obfuscating the bejesus out of the whole thing.

With LLM platform subsidies ending and the reality of adoption ...

2026-04-29T12:55:21+02:00

With LLM platform subsidies ending and the reality of adoption over time becoming clear, I really hope we can get to the point where we figure out the actual subset of software engineering tasks this stuff can usefully automate.. The window for employers pretending it replaces developers is closing imo, it was always a smokescreen but it's going to become an existential business threat to all but the biggest, and even then..

I've only gone and blogged about this ...

2026-04-28T17:22:07+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7dhk
_________________________

I've only gone and blogged about this https://dev.to/suesmith/automation-is-a-trade-off-2fh8

When I wrote this post I wasn't thinking about ai, I was ...

2026-04-28T12:33:07+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ty0f
_________________________

When I wrote this post I wasn't thinking about ai, I was thinking about how some of the abstractions in glitch that had been enabling became problematic over time.

With some of the vibe coding platforms what happens is initially enabling then turns out not to be as you e.g. need to extend your app or export it etc.

We aren't explicitly considering the trade-offs we're making.

https://dev.to/suesmith/abstractions-no-not-like-that-3pl3

When you automate or abstract something, you're making a ...

2026-04-28T12:31:16+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…aa70
_________________________

When you automate or abstract something, you're making a guess about what the user needs to know about, and sometimes it turns out you obfuscated away important understanding. Rather then actually considering these tradeoffs we seem to just be automating the fuck out of everything and finding out the hard way, but that's absolutely not necessary.

With the claude wiped my production database story, I see a lot ...

2026-04-28T12:28:55+02:00

With the claude wiped my production database story, I see a lot of discussion about the attribution of blame. I do believe that accountability is going to have a significant impact on how this ai stuff plays out, however in this case I find it more interesting to consider whether the developer made more reckless decisions in part because of the way using llms shifts your understanding or attitude towards the implementation.

A question I have posed on linkedin: > Is human code review a ...

2026-04-26T12:25:04+02:00

A question I have posed on linkedin:

> Is human code review a compliance requirement for software vendors selling to enterprise yet?

Also wondering when this becomes a thing at companies that don't require it for their own software lol.

Absolutely wild how many men make patronising comments on ...

2026-04-06T11:56:06+02:00

Absolutely wild how many men make patronising comments on linkedin posts and have the "open to work" flag on, to not even have the sense to think prospective employers might be women and will scan your activity on there is something else

tldr this is why I don't block them

I wonder at what point the affected skills and understanding ...

2026-04-04T12:23:03+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ahvw
_________________________

I wonder at what point the affected skills and understanding become business critical in different settings, because in practice that's when things might change, I joked about this on linkedin but I could envisage a situation similar to what happened with observability and monitoring tools as everything moved to the cloud but for codebase comprehension, when does it become urgent that your teams know how the fuck your software works

The real "human in the loop" would be for the assignment ...

2026-04-04T12:18:27+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…4kz5
_________________________

The real "human in the loop" would be for the assignment of accountability lol, I find it absolutely bananas how many traditionally risk averse organisations have embraced this stuff without meaningful guardrails, but I do believe the legal shit, compliance, risk management etc will be the thing that enforces some regulation of these practices rather than the quality or reliability of the output itself

Thinking about this again and I think when these tools encounter ...

2026-04-04T12:14:16+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…95ms
_________________________

Thinking about this again and I think when these tools encounter ambiguity, from the perspective of their logic when there's no way to verify correctness from the training data, instead of coming back to the human and asking them to make a judgment they keep cycling or hallucinate an "answer"

The traditional way of resolving this would be for the human to make a choice they take responsibility for, but since these tools are partially accountability sinks they're not designed for that

The fun part is that I gave claude a few shots at building it, ...

2026-04-03T13:11:41+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qcug
_________________________

The fun part is that I gave claude a few shots at building it, it's a low stakes project, I don't really care about the implementation and just need something that works, but it failed miserably because it's a relatively novel app using niche libraries that aren't well documented and will be almost non existent in training data, but it's a super simple system I could teach a beginner coder to build

People keep talking about llms killing saas but we were quoted a ...

2026-04-03T13:09:30+02:00

People keep talking about llms killing saas but we were quoted a ludicrous amount for a previously free platform during the week and I'm rustling up an alternative that's completely free aside from a few days of my own labour using the magical automation that is ✨bash scripting✨

I see tech men have rebranded part-time working as ...

2026-04-01T12:16:44+02:00

I see tech men have rebranded part-time working as "fractional" to distinguish it from the kind of thing women do

yeah this is the more challenging part in reality eh

2026-03-31T00:27:58+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…a7nt
_________________________

yeah this is the more challenging part in reality eh

Paging the replying men of mastodon

2026-03-30T21:58:33+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…n9lt
_________________________

Paging the replying men of mastodon

People who encounter perspectives they mostly agree with, but ...

2026-03-30T21:58:11+02:00

People who encounter perspectives they mostly agree with, but focus on the part they disagree with or don't like, should know that's the literal opposite to how successful social movements are built

"I warn my students: - Yes, AI can generate the code for this ...

2026-03-30T13:14:57+02:00

"I warn my students:

- Yes, AI can generate the code for this assignment. Don’t let it. You have to write the code.

I explain that, if they don’t write the code, they will not be able to effectively read the code. The ability to read code is certainly going to be valuable, maybe more valuable, in an AI-based coding future."

This is 💯 the advice I'm giving young folk right now.

https://htmx.org/essays/yes-and/

Nostr event nevent1qqsxn4tp9nj7q2n42smy5498jmlxtgjs9j0m6sxtp2jz4s705sps3lszyrzprt459gkpks22w0mzw3tntde3kvdpzwqdk052kfd88r4fj8zrg5uemu8

2026-03-24T17:37:56+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…t72q
_________________________

A couple of tech writing memes that didn't make my talk ...

2026-03-24T17:36:53+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…rg5j
_________________________

A couple of tech writing memes that didn't make my talk

I've written up a rough overview of my #monkigras talk on ...

2026-03-23T13:46:16+01:00

I've written up a rough overview of my #monkigras talk on developer learning and AI assisted coding from last week here, will likely be doing it + similar talks again later in the year

https://www.sue.codes/blog/fingerscode/

Although I believe companies will have to dial down the claims ...

2026-03-12T18:01:33+01:00

Although I believe companies will have to dial down the claims that ai replaces their workers, I think it's important not to expect that to happen on the basis of productivity.

I say this because we already have a track record of productivity and other supposed indicators of business success being sacrificed in favour of control.

The cost of employee attrition, the endless studies showing how remote work and shorter working hours make people more effective etc.

So aye, the usual propaganda ...

2026-01-04T13:24:20+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…pkfj
_________________________

So aye, the usual propaganda

On the viral tweet about claude generating in an hour what a team ...

2026-01-04T13:21:39+01:00

On the viral tweet about claude generating in an hour what a team at google had apparently built in a year, the OP provided more context which.. of course it was a misrepresentation of what had actually happened

I remember the books but I don't think we had a tv version!

2025-12-18T18:32:43+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…v0ff
_________________________

I remember the books but I don't think we had a tv version!

🤣 I had not seen this

2025-12-18T18:14:36+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…zfhk
_________________________

🤣 I had not seen this

You thought you'd seen innovation, well these slippers are ...

2025-12-18T18:10:11+01:00

You thought you'd seen innovation, well these slippers are also dusters 🤯

I had a cat who hated the smell of an air freshener we had, but ...

2025-12-16T01:55:49+01:00

I had a cat who hated the smell of an air freshener we had, but would deliberately go up and smell it every time was near it, just to verify how appalling it was and be annoyed by it all over again. Well, that's how a lot of people appear to use social media.

Above all else you need to learn how not to center yourself or ...

2025-12-11T18:18:56+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…k0sq
_________________________

Above all else you need to learn how not to center yourself or your frustrations at things not being the way you think they should be, or people making decisions you think are mistaken. This is why I love Sidney Dekker's Field Guide to Understanding Human Error.

I've managed to bring about a small amount of change in ...

2025-12-11T18:16:28+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…qpe4
_________________________

I've managed to bring about a small amount of change in organisational behaviour over the years, certainly more than my level of seniority would lead you to suspect was feasible. In every single case I've done it by starting with conversations to ask why things are the way they are and taking a non-judgemental approach. You have to meet people where they are and assume there are things about their experiences that you don't know.

Aside from everything else, if you actually want to persuade ...

2025-12-11T18:12:52+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…u3qp
_________________________

Aside from everything else, if you actually want to persuade people to stop using LLMs, you need to start by trying to understand *why* they are using these technologies. Otherwise I have to conclude you don't want to influence change so much as judge folk because it makes you feel better about yourself.

I mentioned on bluesky that several friends use LLMs to automate ...

2025-12-11T18:10:04+01:00

I mentioned on bluesky that several friends use LLMs to automate bureaucratic crap in their day jobs, and I get a guy confidently explaining that they clearly can't tell the difference between what matters and what doesn't.. These are mostly folk who work in non profits and public sector orgs, who do important work for low pay, and are automating timewasting, energy sapping nonsense to let them focus on the shit they actually care about, but this eejit is comfortable in his moral superiority.

Over on bluesky where the conversation is a lot more heated ...

2025-11-29T14:48:13+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…98un
_________________________

Over on bluesky where the conversation is *a lot more heated* I've seen folk telling engineering leads they're being unfair in expecting contributors to understand the code in a commit before it can be merged.. That is a recipe for harm without accountability.

My less popular opinion is that LLM assisted coding can also be ...

2025-11-29T14:45:30+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…dpn0
_________________________

My less popular opinion is that LLM assisted coding can also be part of a pathway to accessing those opportunities, but not by having the human avoid the code!

We also have an obligation to mitigate the harms software systems ...

2025-11-29T14:39:01+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…9k3u
_________________________

We also have an obligation to mitigate the harms software systems can cause, and to manage accountability. That also depends on people understanding code.

More code in the world is going to require *more* people with coding skills, gen AI makes it more urgent that we teach coding.

I sometimes see people describing resistance to LLM assisted ...

2025-11-29T14:37:10+01:00

I sometimes see people describing resistance to LLM assisted coding as gatekeeping and I get that, software engineering culture is absolutely rife with gatekeeping, I quite literally dedicated dedicated my career to developer education because I want more people to have access to these opportunities.

But here's the thing, in order to fully participate in the world of software you will still need to learn to code, giving people the impression that isn't the case is not empowering.

"Writing code is easy. Once you have a solution in mind, and ...

2025-11-23T13:05:25+01:00

"Writing code is easy. Once you have a solution in mind, and have mastered the syntax of your favorite programming language, writing code is easy. Having an LLM write entire functions for you? Even easier. But the hard part isn’t the writing. It’s the reading. It’s the time it takes to load the mental model of the system into your head. That’s where all the cost really is."

https://idiallo.com/blog/writing-code-is-easy-reading-is-hard

When you read the book and read anything about what Mary Shelley ...

2025-11-07T23:39:32+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…2yqc
_________________________

When you read the book and read anything about what Mary Shelley was going through this conclusion becomes inevitable

I like Guillermo del Toro but I also think men should stop making ...

2025-11-07T23:38:38+01:00

I like Guillermo del Toro but I also think men should stop making versions of Frankenstein

that's the thing, I think we need to get a lot more ...

2025-11-07T16:02:12+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…luxq
_________________________

that's the thing, I think we need to get a lot more intentional about good practices for using these tools *in the context of team collaboration* both in terms of how it fits into the puzzle when pairing happens between more and less experienced folk, code review, etc etc, it's all a bit chaotic at the moment

yeah you don't need to read it all lol, I'm just glad to ...

2025-11-07T15:53:13+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…kex5
_________________________

yeah you don't need to read it all lol, I'm just glad to see more of this thinking out there

"The more Copilot handles, the less devs feel responsible for ...

2025-11-07T15:41:58+01:00

"The more Copilot handles, the less devs feel responsible for the code they ship."

A lot of interesting stuff in here

https://dev.to/dev_tips/copilot-is-gaslighting-developers-and-were-all-pretending-its-fine-51j9

My conviction that most LLM coding tooling is aimed at avoiding ...

2025-11-07T12:45:39+01:00

My conviction that most LLM coding tooling is aimed at avoiding learning rather than enabling it just keeps getting stronger. Today I'm looking at debugging tools for LLM generated code and you'll never guess what everything I'm finding uses, why it's more LLMs of course. 🤡

If anything I would say the glorification of specialist skills ...

2025-10-11T12:44:48+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…uldg
_________________________

If anything I would say the glorification of specialist skills correlates with a lot of the toxicity in dev communities. It goes hand in hand with a refusal to consider perspectives beyond your own.

Often I see software developers refer to generalists in a ...

2025-10-11T12:42:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…nvq5
_________________________

Often I see software developers refer to generalists in a disparaging way, and for sure economic dynamics are forcing teams to do more with less which reduces the potential for specialism and that can be a problem, but there is tremendous value in the perspectives that come with a generalist approach in my experience.

Something I think is important to understand when it comes to ...

2025-10-11T12:40:17+02:00

Something I think is important to understand when it comes to what we call specialists vs generalists is that the distinction isn't between being skilled or unskilled.. Generalists use a different set of skills, at a different abstraction level within their field or organisation or whatever. Once again, tis not a zero sum game.

A very solid quality of life multiplier I can recommend is ...

2025-09-28T19:58:36+02:00

A very solid quality of life multiplier I can recommend is getting the full Columbo series on DVD should you have the capacity to play them

Saw this shit in a hotel bar I'll be taking all my friends ...

2025-09-28T00:07:35+02:00

Saw this shit in a hotel bar I'll be taking all my friends who like books to, just to annoy the absolute fuck out of them

CPP - covert person prompt Need to workshop names

2025-09-23T19:15:49+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…90su
_________________________

CPP - covert person prompt

Need to workshop names

Trying to pin down the characteristics of these comments / ...

2025-09-23T19:13:17+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…l96r
_________________________

Trying to pin down the characteristics of these comments / questions designed to prompt human content generation 🥴

* They are generic and don't refer to a specific project the person is working on
* They use stock phrases you'd see in listicle type articles (asking about options and tradeoffs etc)
* They can be described as requests for content (RFCs lolol)

I've been checking the poster profiles as well, if they do a lot of similar comments etc

I mean, you can go far with content up to the point in time when ...

2025-09-23T15:18:58+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…5tu5
_________________________

I mean, you can go far with content up to the point in time when all this started, but the utility of that will fade pretty fast surely

This has kind of blown my mind, we've gone so quickly from ...

2025-09-23T15:15:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…5u5f
_________________________

This has kind of blown my mind, we've gone so quickly from the storyline that LLMs will be generating all the content in future to folk trying to trick humans into generating more content to feed the LLMs.. It's all unravelling so fast, if we are actually able to build bot scraping protection that covers a decent chunk of the web in the short term this business model is surely going to just collapse.. The part that is predicated on stealing other people's content without consent anyway

Bowfin! 🤮

2025-09-23T12:26:29+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8sy4
_________________________

Bowfin! 🤮

And you're the kind of person who is trying to keep community ...

2025-09-23T12:25:41+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…035t
_________________________

And you're the kind of person who is trying to keep community spaces alive hence you posting on these platforms in the first place.. 💀

The horrible thing about this is that it's one of those ...

2025-09-23T12:24:22+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…r2xl
_________________________

The horrible thing about this is that it's one of those situations where there's nothing obviously untoward but your brain goes eeehhh something's no right here and unless you pay attention to it you'll likely just respond, especially folk who share tutorials and the like freely by default.

"Why do you ask?" I think I'll be responding to ...

2025-09-23T12:08:31+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qtpr
_________________________

"Why do you ask?"

I think I'll be responding to questions with this a lot more

So when you've cannibalised all of the existing content on ...

2025-09-23T11:55:34+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ydhd
_________________________

So when you've cannibalised all of the existing content on the web what do you do to get more? Trick people into giving you it I guess.

Turns out I am not the only person paranoid enough to have asked ...

2025-09-23T11:53:36+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…drns
_________________________

Turns out I am not the only person paranoid enough to have asked this question https://www.reddit.com/r/gamingsuggestions/comments/1n37n8a/are_we_getting_farmed_by_some_bot_questions/

The response to that would be a dead giveaway I think if there ...

2025-09-23T11:35:24+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…0la6
_________________________

The response to that would be a dead giveaway I think if there was one

I guess you could add a wee bit of human passable friction like ...

2025-09-23T11:34:50+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…78f5
_________________________

I guess you could add a wee bit of human passable friction like "could you explain more about why you ask this? what are you working on" or something

In which case, I am certainly not taking the bait and providing ...

2025-09-23T11:33:47+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…l4ws
_________________________

In which case, I am certainly not taking the bait and providing more free content to help kill the spaces this is cannibalising.. but the risk of not engaging with genuine folk is always there, it's a judgement call for every post

Which leaves me wondering, I now see a lot of posts in places on ...

2025-09-23T11:31:45+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…w5l6
_________________________

Which leaves me wondering, I now see a lot of posts in places on the web that look like prompts, so is part of the AI bot traffic a method for stimulating human content generation to feed the LLMs by essentially posting prompts in places where people provide content..? Github issues, developer tutorial comments, forums etc..

If it was a person using LLMs to polish their writing I'd ...

2025-09-23T11:28:13+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…cx7r
_________________________

If it was a person using LLMs to polish their writing I'd happily respond, but these feel like questions you'd use to seed content if that makes sense, it's shit like "what are the tradeoffs" etc that I must assume a human commenter on a developer tutorial would not care about, they sound like prompts for generating articles basically

It's the kind of thing that wouldn't be caught in spam ...

2025-09-23T11:26:01+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7706
_________________________

It's the kind of thing that wouldn't be caught in spam filters or whatever unless the user is posting too frequently or getting flagged a lot, but the content looks plausible, it just feels off, stock phrases etc that now make me think it's not a question a human being wrote..

Normally when I post tutorials I make a point of being responsive ...

2025-09-23T11:22:25+02:00

Normally when I post tutorials I make a point of being responsive to comments but these days so many of them "feel" AI generated and I'm inclined not to respond, I hate what this shit is doing to online interaction

It's another way in which LLMs reflect the misprioritisation ...

2025-09-13T12:03:25+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…km0g
_________________________

It's another way in which LLMs reflect the misprioritisation in dev learning, itself a reflection of the economic dynamics.. we always focused too much on writing code over reading it, and this production line mentality is why anyone would believe a machine that generates code could replace a developer

We're having to fully articulate the skills in building software for the first time

This is why I believe we're going to need better tools for ...

2025-09-13T11:55:41+02:00

This is why I believe we're going to need better tools for reading and exploring codebases

"Writing code is easy. Once you have a solution in mind, and have mastered the syntax of your favorite programming language, writing code is easy. Having an LLM write entire functions for you? Even easier. But the hard part isn’t the writing. It’s the reading. It’s the time it takes to load the mental model of the system into your head. That’s where all the cost really is."

https://idiallo.com/blog/writing-code-is-easy-reading-is-hard

Fooling people into thinking you know about wine when you've ...

2025-08-09T18:14:53+02:00

Fooling people into thinking you know about wine when you've actually just seen the Carsini Columbo episode twelve times

There's a guide in here on teaching schoolchildren not to ...

2025-08-04T15:28:28+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…pgwv
_________________________

There's a guide in here on teaching schoolchildren not to anthropomorphise AI and if we could have journalists attend the same classes that would be great thx

"I vibe coded enterprise grade software in four days" ...

2025-08-02T17:39:40+02:00

"I vibe coded enterprise grade software in four days"

I'm gonnae go out on a limb and say naw, ye didnae

The primary reason such software normally takes longer than this isn't because the programmers can't type fast enough ffs

Of course I should have guessed this but the raspberry pi ...

2025-08-01T16:36:31+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…z4yt
_________________________

Of course I should have guessed this but the raspberry pi foundation have some great guides to coding pedagogy in the age of ai which include computational thinking and anthropomorphism https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pedagogy-quick-reads-turning-abstract-ideas-into-classroom-practice/

Another tip I'm seeing about coding with LLMs is that ...

2025-08-01T16:08:34+02:00

Another tip I'm seeing about coding with LLMs is that it's most effective if you break a project into smaller tasks, so... Decomposition

Again, I believe computational thinking skills are going to remain essential

Not exactly an abstraction but another glitch affordance I found ...

2025-07-14T17:36:58+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…h2xd
_________________________

Not exactly an abstraction but another glitch affordance I found so valuable for education purposes was the learner not having to download or install anything on their computer, it was a great enabler but everything being in the cloud is far from ideal from a cost, energy, or connectivity standpoint.. Curious about platforms like stackblitz that do it by running containers locally in the browser..

So tldr it's just a big fucking cocktail of people who ...

2025-07-13T20:10:53+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qkk2
_________________________

So tldr it's just a big fucking cocktail of people who don't respect other people's skills 🤡

Another fun repeated theme in these spaces is folk who are coders ...

2025-07-13T20:08:31+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…gn8z
_________________________

Another fun repeated theme in these spaces is folk who are coders and are managing to churn out completed apps but then realising things like product market fit, sales and marketing in general, are actually important.. will it make them respect coworkers who do these things in their day jobs perhaps, I wonder lol

What you've done there is set up a doomed consultancy

2025-07-12T13:31:23+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kzpw
_________________________

What you've done there is set up a doomed consultancy

There's also an ai product from ex faang employees designed ...

2025-07-12T13:30:29+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…r9h4
_________________________

There's also an ai product from ex faang employees designed to "finish the job" for your llm generated apps and their deal is if their tool can't do it they'll do it via professional services which is peak "oh mate" lol

I'm still on vibe coding reddit and there's a recurring ...

2025-07-12T12:27:55+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…etrr
_________________________

I'm still on vibe coding reddit and there's a recurring pattern in the replies to posts like this

"I'm a non-coder who loves the idea of creating software that works the way I want it to. [...] but apart from very simple HTML/CSS projects, I've never managed to complete something that actually worked. It always ends in an endless loop of the Al trying to fix bugs."

People will say oh but the models are getting better, that they've been successful *but they already know how to code*

What I'm most concerned about as an educator is the paths to ...

2025-07-10T19:53:26+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kemt
_________________________

What I'm most concerned about as an educator is the paths to *becoming* a senior software engineer collapsing, and lo I will be exploring learning experiences that start from an existing app

Gonnae be a lot more red diffs

2025-07-10T19:49:05+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qr2u
_________________________

Gonnae be a lot more red diffs

I guess one way to put this would be what happens if you ask a ...

2025-07-10T19:47:23+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…h3vq
_________________________

I guess one way to put this would be what happens if you ask a senior engineer whether the existence of lots more code in the world makes their involvement more or less necessary lol

And the typical stacks these vibe coding tools generate also tend ...

2025-07-10T16:53:34+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…h2xd
_________________________

And the typical stacks these vibe coding tools generate also tend to use the most ludicrously overcomplicated frameworks the web has been characterised by in recent years which is somewhat ironic lol. If the generated app was using vanilla shit it would be a hell of a lot easier to dig into the code but instead learners will be getting flung in at the deep end if they start this way.

It makes me think about other abstractions in software and the ...

2025-07-10T16:50:42+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…e4qz
_________________________

It makes me think about other abstractions in software and the deal you make when you commit to one.. One of the abstractions in glitch that made it a great enabler at one time was the removal of a deployment step.. Your app was instantly online which was a hugely valuable automation but as the web changed became more of a problem for various reasons

A huge part of the smoke and mirrors at work is that you very ...

2025-07-10T16:47:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…u63y
_________________________

A huge part of the smoke and mirrors at work is that you very quickly get what looks closer to a *real thing* than it is if you don't know how software actually works, it appears like you're on the home stretch almost immediately when you've actually just heard the gun go off

I'd also double down on my earlier belief that these tools ...

2025-07-10T16:43:13+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8ezq
_________________________

I'd also double down on my earlier belief that these tools are primarily going to be used most effectively by software engineers, both in terms of the specification step relying on understanding of computational processing, and that the bulk of the work is not in generating code

There are also multiple posts from folk realising they are going ...

2025-07-10T16:40:11+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…g8ry
_________________________

There are also multiple posts from folk realising they are going to need to learn to code or hire a developer to fix an issue, get their app to the next stage, etc etc..

With the platforms also ramping up charges I think it's safe to say that even with improvements around debugging it's becoming clearer that LLMs will only take you a small portion of the way to building a *real thing* with code

I've started browsing reddit for vibe coding chat to get a ...

2025-07-10T16:21:52+02:00

I've started browsing reddit for vibe coding chat to get a better sense of the state of things and it has been eye opening.. For example one today titled "How do I give the website to the client"

...

Let's just say there is going to be plenty of work for developers, the jobs might dry up temporarily but someone's going to need to clean up the mess, and anyone who's business is tangled up in these apps will need to be ready to pay a premium to sort their shit out

One of the things I love about these protests is that they ...

2025-06-19T13:46:42+02:00

One of the things I love about these protests is that they demonstrate how *misogynist* the associated policies and expectations are, they are simultaneously feminist protests and as a side effect these women are showing how utterly contradictory TERFism is ♥️

https://www.out.com/gay-athletes/trans-woman-swims-topless-england

Always love to see debates about the supposed benefits and ...

2025-05-27T19:43:10+02:00

Always love to see debates about the supposed benefits and drawbacks of remote work because if it wasn't an option I'd simply need to leave the tech industry

Looking at the microsoft github conversations everyone is ...

2025-05-22T11:30:02+02:00

Looking at the microsoft github conversations everyone is laughing about has me wondering about the suggestion that AI assisted coding with an agent is just a new abstraction level.. The devs trying to wrangle copilot are having to dig in at a level of detail that I think implies that analogy is wrong

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1krttqo/my_new_hobby_watching_ai_slowly_drive_microsoft/