LVB

I didn't use it pre-SolarWinds, but even now it seems OK? Hope it stays that way.

It’s a reasonable question, and one I had myself. Of course the UX is different, but that is self evident and we don’t need to be pedantic. What’s not obvious is whether this is wrapping the existing RandomPage API, filtering it, doing some sort of prediction/recommendation, etc.

As a very specific example, I can go to a bank with my W-2s and credit history and get a mortgage. That’s a complex and valuable decades-long relationship they’re facilitating.

>Unless we're including distribution when we say "creating".

I think it has to be included given how much traffic I see from mobile devs I follow about getting stuck in some review blackhole, running afoul of a TOS or payment rule, etc. Getting the app built is in your control, but getting it to end users has a big dependency on others, potentially. The idea of being able to push code to a server you control and deliver instant updates is appealing.

The biggest nuisance aspect for me is when it is trying to do things that the LSP can do 100% correctly. Almost surely it is my tooling setup and the LLM is squashing LSP stuff. Seeing Copilot (or even Cursor) suggesting methods or parameters that don't exist is really annoying. Just stand down and let the LSP answer those basic questions, TYVM.

I’ve never understood how John Gruber presents himself as a connoisseur of fine UX and typography, and then for decades publishes a bland, often difficult-to-read site.

I understand the perspective and generally have the same stance. But, a subtlety is that you know that "user425712" (made up) is you, and you can see your contributions being upvoted, quoted, discussed, your overall karma increase, etc.

Given that, as a thought experiment, would you be OK with your answers/comments being attributed to others, or that once you've submitted them, there is no linkage to you at all (e.g. you can't even know what you submitted)? Would it be as satisfying of a process if your contributions are just dissolved into a soup of other data irreversibly?

That doesn't sound like a system I'd be as keen to contribute to. Maybe the ulterior motive is at least being able to find my body of work as a source of personal fulfillment. Where is my work in the various LLMs? I have no idea, and will likely never know.

Discussed near the last part of an earlier post.

“… exploring not-for-profit structures to help ensure the long-term sustainability of Ghostty.”

https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-is-coming

Appreciate the thoughts on this. I've been very conflicted about this topic lately. I'm an old Vim programmer, but I've leapt into AI-assistance earnestly. First it was out of curiosity and some amazement at how well they worked. Then, especially with Cursor, it was like, "Holy shit I'm flying through this stuff, basically hitting just tab. It's reading my mind."

But do I feel something weakening in me? Yeah. I don't have nearly the intimate mental model of where things are in code and how it ties together. It's like my brain is optimizing for the next thing that will prompt a useful tab completion, as opposed to tracking the whole. I don't like the feeling, but the actual output doesn't lie. When I switch to a new file and Cursor dumps in a 30 line function, without asking, that is correct based on what I was working as 5 second before, that's almost unquestionably faster. But at what cost...

I'm trying to find the sweet spot in all of this. There are some areas, like writing volumes of HTML/CSS/Tailwind, that I'll happily hand over to an LLM b/c I'm not great at it, I don't care to be, and it is a time compression of probably 50:1. OTOH, I'm thinking about dialing it back a bit on my backend and SQL code, which is a bit nearer and dearer. Simple autocomplete to save some typing is fine, but maybe lighten up on "Is this (20 lines) what you want? No? How about this? Or this? ..." tab-completion mania. I'd like to still be able to land the plane w/o autopilot.

What framework did you settle on?

I fell victim to the line offered by certain indie devs along the line of, "Sure, it's hard to get a big piece of the pie, but with a BILLION users even a small piece is significant."

I'm seriously considering a simple web app for my next project. Yeah the UX will be worse, but I'll completely bypass trying to appease Apple, and it will get into the world much quicker, mostly likely. If it's a dud, I might as well fail fast.

I'll say, this has been the worst part of my little indie dev adventure.

I knew I'd be uncomfortable with a lot of it, but I also didn't realize how flat out bad I am at it. I've spent so much time fiddling with keywords, refreshing splash pages for app stores, making a good landing page, buying ads, adjusting paywalls, etc. But the uptake has been depressingly low. A few people downloaded the app, but not only have I had no paying customers and no reviews, no one has even tried the sync aspect of the app that I built a backend for! I really misjudged how little attention it would get in the app store, and how rapidly they'd bail from it.

My wife and I use the app. I find that code improvements bring some satisfaction even if there is no external ROI, whereas marketing type efforts are just a drag.

Nice. My son likes the YouTube videos of these sorting demos and I’m sure he’ll get into this too.

I so miss the basements of my midwest youth and early adulthood. They were the place for projects. I built so much. My west coast home since 2010 doesn't have a basement, and we've not much interior space for projects (esp when you're talking construction, tools, soldering and such). My spouse is stickler about the inside staying nice, too. The garage is the alternative, but it's so inferior. There's a car there, it's cold, etc. Oh for a basement...

Some hi-res footage of an NFL toss: https://youtu.be/-sjAyQcv0oM

That makes sense. The mug version of Ember (https://ember.com/products/ember-mug-2) is open on top, which seems like a fancy Bluetooth version of an old-school mug heater.

I could see the sealed one (the "Cup") as working better though.

The old (maybe incorrect) advice I was always told was that continuing to heat the coffee fouled the taste, hence the recommendation to use an insulated mug/thermos as opposed to a Mr. Coffee style warmed carafe. What makes this gadget different/better?

Aren't banks sort of the poster children for legacy practices though? Only works with this or that browser, here are some weird password rules, yes I have an SVGA monitor, no I can't search older than 90 days, etc. I'm used to turning off my modern expectations and just getting into the 20 years-old flow for the time I'm logged into the average bank. No, I don't want to switch banks (where my mortgage and dozens of ACH linkages are set up) to have better ad blocker compatibility.

We don’t even need to ditch the electoral college, but "just" get the states to more proportionately assign their electors, as Nebraska and Maine have done. But good luck with that, too. Can you imagine trying to convince, for example, California to proportionally allocate their 54 votes in this political climate and give Trump 40%?

Trying to build a chess club management app for our school/district. It's mostly basic CRUD, though it's an avenue to learn Svelte & SvelteKit. I'm becoming more involved with the club and can't stand that everything is run on paper forms and giant Google Sheets. (If it was all smoothly running, I wouldn't rock the boat. But when I found that we're writing out dozens of match cards by hand every week and have ~0 way to track progress, I couldn't resist.)

Not specific to this update, but I wanted to chime in with just how useful Claude has been, and relatively better than ChatGPT and GitHub copilot for daily use. I've been pro for maybe 6 months. I'm not a power user leveraging their API or anything. Just the chat interface, though with ever more use of Projects, lately. I use it every day, whether for mundane answers or curiosities, to "write me this code", to general consultation on a topic. It has replaced search in a superior way and I feel hugely productive with it.

I do still occasionally pop over to ChatGPT to test their their waters (or if Claude is just not getting it), but I've not felt any need to switch back or have both. Well done, Anthropic!

I've got a less robust version of this (also as Ansible -> Hetzner) that I've toyed with. I'm often tempted to progress it, but I've realized it is a distraction. I say that about me, and not too negatively. I know that I want to get some apps done, but the sysadmin-y stuff is pretty fun and alluring but it can chew up a lot of time.

Currently I'm viewing the $19 plan from Neon as acceptable (I just look in my Costco cart for comparison) for me now. Plus, I'm getting something for my money beyond not having to build it myself: branching. This has proved way handier than I'd expected as a solo dev and I use it all the time. A DIY postgres wouldn't have that, at least not as cleanly.

If charges go much beyond the $19 and it is still just me faffing about, I'll probably look harder at the DIY PG. OTOH if there is good real world usage and/or $ coming in, then it's easier to view Neon as just a cost of business (within reason).

Definitely considering a dedicated Postgres VPS. I've not looked yet, but I'd like to locate a decent cookbook around this. I've installed Postgres on a server before for playing around, and it was easy enough. But there are a lot of settings, considerations around access and backups and updates, etc. I suspect these things aren't overly thorny, but some of the guides/docs can make it feel that way. We'll see, as it's an area of interest, for sure.

I'm currently using SQLite + Litestream with one app, though it's strictly Litestream as a backup/safety net and I'd be manually standing the thing back up if it came to building the server anew, as that's not automated.

If anything, I'd probably end up looking at a dedicated PG VPS. I've started to get used to a few Postgres conveniences over SQLite, especially around datetimes, various extensions, and more sophisticated table alterations (without that infamous SQLite 12-step process), etc. So that's been an evolution, too, compared to my always-SQLite days.

I'm always curious what folks use for their database for things like this. Even though I like SQLite--a lot--my preference has become that the app is generally separate and mostly stateless. Almost always the data is the most important thing, so I like being able to expand/replace/trash the app infra at will with no worries.

Thought about maybe running a Postgres VPS, but I've enjoyed using neon.tech more than I expected (esp. the GUI and branching). I guess the thing that has crept in: speed/ease is really beating out my ingrained cheapness as I've gotten older and have less time. A SaaS DB has sped things up. Still don't like the monthly bills & variability though.

I think they’re saying that instead of having to try, for example, an iOS app by downloading it from the App Store, they prefer to visit a URL.

this is the problem

Learn skimming? I say this as a old person who actually had "skimming" and "scanning" (different things!) as part of my elementary reading curriculum. We even had to practice skimming the whole (printed) NYT in 5 minutes. This piece is seven short paragraphs. I can get the gist and tone in a few seconds. Quicker, in fact, than reading the chatgpt snoozefest.

I'll happily dump an 80 page patent or court ruling into chatgpt for a summary. But if an actual human wrote a few hundred word personal blog post, I'd rather read it.

That’s a name I remember from my youth. I became pretty interested in all these curiously named file transfer protocols (Xmodem, Zmodem, Kermit, bimodem, etc.) and learned what I could from poring over microfiche archives of magazines and papers at the local library.