Do LLMs know how to make software? (No.)
If you ever seriously tried LLMs for coding you should conclude that they are inherently useless for generating text that isn’t a verifiable algorithm; but do LLMs know how to make software?
Thomas Fuchs
How to write a great error message
This post was originally published on Medium.
Imagine being in the office. In your cubicle. You’ve worked long hours this week for an upcoming product introduction. You’re tired and cranky, and you just want the weekend to finally arrive.
But first you have to try if the homepage
How to actually ship software that actually works
Do you think you have what it takes to ship great software? I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not easy and takes a lot of effort—but it’s all skills that you can learn.
Here’s my checklist for getting software projects done, in a
What do you need to make a successful web app?
Here’s some things you need to make a successful web app:
* A plan to make an application that helps real people to make their lives easier, solving a well-researched problem
* Understand human psychology
* Know how to design, both in terms of UX flow and visual design
* A marketing
Why frameworks don’t have much to do with how easy it is to add a feature
You’re using the hottest and hippest new framework? You generate Node-powered Erlang templates in a crowdsourced Haskell cluster? You run JavaScript on a Ruby VM that uses a Lisp DSL? You stream events to your MVVC like there’s no tomorrow?
Whatever you do, in a real business,
Client-side MVC is not a silver bullet
This is an edited repost of a comment of mine on Amy’s blog post about why we shut down Charm.
Charm, as it is, is using Backbone.js, Underscore.js and Zepto on the front-end, and Rails 2.3, Postgres, memcached, redis, resque, and for websockets Sinatra, and
5 rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook
Wondering what your “hourly rate” is when you go out and write a technical book? Traditionally, publishers will tell you that you do it for “exposure” but we all know that you can die from that. Seriously, even for the publisher it’s a big gamble, and with all the
Flowchart: how to retinafy your website
⌛This post is preserved because it is of historical interest
With Retina screens all around us, it’s time to take the plunge and retinafy your website or webapp. Here’s the process I use (for both mobile and desktop) in the form of a flowchart for some more sanity
European vs American cooking habits and why it matters for programming
Once upon a time I lived a quietish life in Vienna, Austria. I cooked a lot for friends and myself. I really enjoyed it and more importantly I just knew that I’ve learned everything there is about making meals from my friends and family and from what you “just
Zepto.js, a minimalist JavaScript framework for mobile WebKit browsers
⌛This post is preserved because it is of historical interest
Mobile WebKit based browsers (like those on the iPhone/iPad, Android and Palm webOS) provide really powerful DOM, JavaScript and CSS features. So why not use them in a framework, that’s specifically crafted for these modern mobile devices?
The