Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
When browsing the web, I still follow rabbit holes. For example, I will click on a link, read an article, find another link in the body, follow that one as well, and keep on going until I get lost in the weeds and appear in wonderland. When I'm reading through my phone, I often have to go back to the browser history to see the trail of websites that lead me to my destination. But sometimes, I just can't find my way back. Why? Because somehow, I wasn't reading through the web browser. I was browsing through webview.
As a developer, you'll hear these terms often: "stable software," "stable release," or "stable version." Intuitively, it just means you can rely on it. That's not entirely wrong, but when I was new to programming, I didn't truly grasp the technical meaning. For anyone learning, the initial, simple definition of "it works reliably" is a great starting point. But if you're building systems for the long haul, that definition is incomplete.
Have you ever read a blog post here and thought: Meh? Some articles I write are ideas I've been working on for over a year. I think about them often, then add them to my little note app. Sometimes I'm driving and think of something clever, so I dictate it to my notes app while the kids are fighting in the background. Then, in the middle of the night, I take time away from sleep and start putting the ideas together. All because I challenged myself to publish every other day for an entire year. I do all this, hit the publish button, and... well, and then nothing.
When companies start embracing AI, it's only a matter of time before it reaches the engineering teams. For competent developers, AI makes their lives easier. The benefits of tools like Cursor or Copilot are often invisible because developers use them as tools to accelerate their workflow, not replace it. It's confusing when companies claim a specific percentage of their code is "AI-generated," since these tools function as assistants. With that logic in mind, could we say a certain percentage of code was "StackOverflow copy-pasted"?
You've probably seen the NEO home robot by now, from the company 1X. It's a friendly humanoid with a plush-toy face that can work around your house. Cleaning, making beds, folding laundry, even picking up after meals. Most importantly, there's the way it looks. Unlike Tesla's "Optimus," which resembles an industrial robot, NEO looks friendly. It has a cute, plush face with round eyes. Something you could let your children play with.
One thing that often surprises my friends and family is how tech-avoidant I am. I don't have the latest gadget, I talk about dumb TVs, and Siri isn't activated on my iPhone. The only thing left is to go to the kitchen, take a sheet of tin foil, and mold it into a hat.
After using Large Language Models extensively, the same questions keep resurfacing. Why didn't the lawyer who used ChatGPT to draft legal briefs verify the case citations before presenting them to a judge? Why are developers raising issues on projects like cURL using LLMs, but not verifying the generated code before pushing a Pull Request? Why are students using AI to write their essays, yet submitting the result without a single read-through?
Around 2013, my team and I finally embarked in upgrading our company's internal software to version 2.0. We had a large backlog of user complaints that we were finally addressing, with security at the top of the list. The very top of the list was moving away from plain text passwords.
Do you have any friends? Not LinkedIn connections, not Instagram followers, not the people you smile at in the office kitchen. I mean friends. The kind you can call at 2 a.m. because your world is falling apart. The kind you will sacrifice your own time and money for. I'm asking because that's not what you get when you purchase one of these new AI pendants called "Friend."
Yes, I loved Andor. It was such a breath of fresh air in the Star Wars universe. The kind of storytelling that made me feel like a kid again, waiting impatiently for my father to bring home VHS tapes of Episodes 5 and 6. I wouldn't call myself a die-hard fan, but I've always appreciated the original trilogy. After binging both seasons of Andor, I immediately rewatched Rogue One, which of course meant I had to revisit A New Hope again.
