Small PINPal Update
Today on stream, I updated PINPal to fix the memorization algorithm.If you haven’t heard of PINPal before, it is a vault password memorization tool. For more detail on what that means, you can check it...
View ArticleA Bigger Database
A Database FileWhen I was 10 years old, and going through a fairly difficult time, I was lucky enough to come into the possession of a piece of software called Claris FileMaker Pro™.FileMaker allowed...
View ArticleStop Writing `__init__` Methods
The HistoryBefore dataclasses were added to Python in version 3.7 — in June of 2018 — the __init__ special method had an important use. If you had a class representing a data structure — for example a...
View ArticleI Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now
The ProblemLike many other self-styled thinky programmer guys, I like to imagine myself as a sort of Holmesian genius, making trenchant observations, collecting them, and then synergizing them into...
View ArticleThe Best Line Length
What’s a good maximum line length for your coding standard?This is, of course, a trick question. By posing it as a question, I have created the misleading impression that it is a question, but Black...
View ArticleR0ML’s Ratio
My father, also known as “R0ML” once described a methodology for evaluating volume purchases that I think needs to be more popular.If you are a hardcore fan, you might know that he has already...
View ArticleThe Futzing Fraction
The most optimistic vision of generative AI1 is that it will relieve us of the tedious, repetitive elements of knowledge work so that we can get to work on the really interesting problems that such...
View ArticleThe “Dependency Cutout” Workflow Pattern, Part I
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before.You’re working on an application. Let’s call it “FooApp”. FooApp has a dependency on an open source library, let’s call it “LibBar”. You find a bug in LibBar...
View ArticleThe Next Thing Will Not Be Big
The dawning of a new year is an opportune moment to contemplate what has transpired in the old year, and consider what is likely to happen in the new one.Today, I’d like to contemplate that...
View ArticleHow To Argue With Me About AI, If You Must
As you already know if you’ve read any of this blog in the last few years, I am a somewhat reluctant — but nevertheless quite staunch — critic of LLMs. This means that I have enthusiasts of varying...
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