I never posted why I paused development on So This Is How I Die. If you’ve been following the devlog, you’ll know the story up to a point. The slow progress, the balancing act with client work, the occasional “I’m having a hard time” entry that I posted because solo dev accountability sometimes means confessing that nothing is on fire, you’re just tired. What you won’t find is a post that says this is where I stopped, and here’s why. ...
I’ve been sitting on this comparison for a while, trying to decide if it was too obvious to write about. Then a good friend of mine DM’d me on Slack about “every vibe coding tech bro is now vibe coding a dashboard to ‘monitor the global situation’. my feed is full of it.” with some screenshots of the kind of stuff that’s popping up everywhere. And it just reminded me; I’m not imagining this. ...
Trigger warning: This post contains opinions. Specifically mine. It also contains a confession or two, which I’m not thrilled about, but here we are. I don’t have many people in tech I actively look up to. The industry is drowning in loud, obnoxious voices who are very good at having opinions and very bad at having done anything. But Carmack is one of the rare exceptions. He’s always been the quiet, thoughtful one. The hacker in the original sense; someone who understands systems deeply enough to bend them, who ships because building is the point, not the clout. I’ve written before about my own struggle with that identity vs. the need to actually make money, that tension between doing the craft and doing the business. Carmack, for most of his career, has never had to compromise on that. He gets to just build. ...
🧠 Something I’ve been thinking about a lot after doing these AI coding experiments… I get why non-devs enjoy this so much. Creating something cool gives you a dopamine hit. Solving a problem does it too. Just like how YT Shorts, IG Reels, TikTok and even LinkedIn these days give you these hits through scrolling, these AI tools do it by “doing, showing, doing, showing”. ...
Intro I posted over on LinkedIn about an interesting comparison between Lovable and Bolt.new which I did. I had this idea for my next Flutter project, but after being hit by the 5th LinkedIn post about Lovable in as many minutes, I had this thought. 😂😂😂 No, actually, the thought was more along the lines of ...
In some of my previous posts I’ve talked about playing around with “vibe coding” tools, more specifically the more hands-on ones like Cursor and Windsurf where I can still jump in if needed. Every time I have an idea for a silly or stupid app just for myself, I tend to gravitate towards these tools, not because I can’t be arsed to do it myself, but because I’m genuinely curious about how well these perform and how much they improve over time. ...
Introduction I keep saying my next post won’t be about AI, and then inevitably, I post something about AI. It’s hard to ignore, it’s the big bubble we are dealing with, and there is so much hype that needs to be ignored and filtered so we can get to the actually good stuff… I’ve been playing around with various tools over the last 3 or 4 months, and I think I’ve settled into what I find to be most useful for me. And while the topic says no-one asked, truth is, this actually does come up in a few discussions on other platforms and groups I’m part of, so I figured I’d love to share, but more importantly, hear what others are doing and why you agree or disagree with me. ...
I’ve been playing around with Cursor and Windsurf, because I keep seeing on social media how great these tools are and how easy it is to build things. And you know what? It’s…. ummm… better than before? Okay, look, it’s impressive. If I compare it so some earlier versions of the IDEs and other tools like Bolt.new, sure, it’s improved. But sheesh, does it take poking and prodding and coddling to get somewhere. Maybe I’m using it wrong, I don’t know, but I wish I could share the transcripts of my chats with these tools so you’ll understand… (can I export those? am I missing a feature somewhere?) ...
Over a year ago a wrote a post about how I felt that, even though ChatGPT was making me more productive, I also felt it was making me lazier and dumber. Since then, I’ve been a lot more intentional about how I use AI tools, in particular generative AI tools and coding assistants. It should be a multiplier, not a replacement or crutch, which is something I see juniors and non-developers struggle with the most, but clearly we can all fall prey too. ...