How we use a tool is totally our responsibility.I was reading a very interesting article about the widespread use of and implications of AI. The author asks the question, "What is an academic credential worth if it only means you were good at ChatGpt?" The implications are interesting, but the answe...

Here is a convention I love for naming data manipulation functionsThe prefixThe prefix I love to use in function names is map, as in mapAThing."Map" means to go from one data format or shape to another.When naming the entire function, use map as the prefix and then the noun of what your mapping to (...

Here's how to disable pagination in Ash framework for Elixir.ScenarioI'm using ash_graphql and trying to get a query to work as desired. A review entity has many projects, via a many_to_many relationship.I want to query a review that will only ever have a handful of projects, so the join to project ...

That's AI -- actual intelligence.I love this bit by Steve Wozniak. He plays cute with the AI question from the eager reporter. Sure, I try it. Sure, it's ok. But you know...I pretty much avoid LLMs because I want things to be really... that I know is accurate. Like something works rather than it did...

Hiring programmers instead of training them is like buying boxed software, hoping it'll work out of the box.Buying boxed softwareBoxed software is so tempting to the manager with a problem to solve. The seller's marketing prowess convinces him that, finally, the silver bullet must be real this time....

An AI-mediated business will eventually be worse.Businesses are falling all over themselves to breathe in more AI. Will we eventually choke on a gob we can't swallow? Or will we slowly saturate ourselves until what we've created is fast but soul-less. Integration of AI into business processes could ...

What will we get when AI has been fully utilized as a marketing medium?Marketing on AIAI has eyeballs. Now what does it need? Ads.It's coming. Of course, it is. Building AI models is expensive. They need a way to recoup investment and create some (ick!) stickiness with vendor partners.When will the ...

Here's how to turn off Elixir Phoenix's Logger.The solution is simple. But it was surprisingly-difficult to find. Here's the Phoenix.Logger doc. But, only after the guy on the forum goes unanswered, and Hermano Valim suggests in this (old) GH issue to use log_level: :error.But I don't want log_level...

Different approaches to keeping up. Stop the bleeding.An hour of AI per dayOh brother. A new aphoroism, but born of the popular craze of the time, nothing timeless.It was tweeted that:An anecdotal survey of GauntletAI grads came to the consensus that staying on the cutting edge of AI takes about one...

Here's a way to mock HTTP requests in Elixir ExUnit test.Install libraryThere's a nice library, mox, which we can install via mix.exs deps:def deps do [ {:mox, "~> 1.2", only: test} ] endMock in test environmentIn our app, we use the httpoison library for doing web requests.In our test environment, ...

What's the cost of introducing something that's not yours to wrap something that's not yours?DependencyYou use something that's not yours.You -> NY1That thing that's not yours (NY2) exposes a public API. This how you talk to it and it talks to you. Well, you don't like the public API. Maybe you thin...

I was flat, but now I see.Digression and progressThis is a post about /life as much as it is about code. But it's an aspect of life profoundly affected by code.Life has been made to be more flat. But life wasn't meant to be flat, or at least mostly flat. Even in a world where digital flatness define...

Here's a solid IRC client for the terminal.Install a clientWant more terminal time? What better place for programmer chat?irssi is a solid little IRC chat client. Install it:sudo apt install irssiChoose a serverWell, where do we want to go? Let's chat Elixir. It used to be on freenode but moved to L...

Here's how to send json as an input variable to a graphql endpoint in ash_graphql.EndpointAsh is all about the declarations. I hereby declare that we'll write an endpoint that takes a JSON object. For our purpose, json just means an object, or a non-scalar.defmodule MyEntity do # ... actions do crea...

Npm install is easy, but the results may not be simple.The claim of easyI saw a Hackernews headling: "Make SVGs interactive in React with 1 line".It caught my eye. It sounded cool. I still think it is. But what a funny let-down I got when I was linked off to the "Show HN" svggles homepage and saw th...

AI's involvement decreases trust and makes reviews more intensive.Source determines trustWhere code comes from establishes my starting level of trust when reviewing code. If it's from John Carmack, I'm already fawning over it. If it's generated from an AI, I'm already more skeptical of it. Code cont...

Here's how to set the default browser in i3.xdg is this useful standard for how to handle application programs in Linux.If you run xdg-open https://jaketrent.com, it'll open the url using a default browser. This is great for opening URLs from the command line.What if the browser you're using recentl...

AI can bust out a lot of code. But where will actual improvement come from?PastA large-language model, LLM, is created with a ton of ingested data. For coding, where does that data come from today? Source code, docs, tutorials, questions and answers, forum conversations, chat logs. These are artifac...

It seems that AI has mainstreamed plagiarism, and surprisingly few seem to care.Committing my codeA person sits down to write code. His AI assistant is hot and ready. Type, type, wait... tab, insert, save, commit, push, deploy.Whose is it?This person claimed the code as his own. Is this plagiarism?W...

Here's how to share setup data between test cases in ExUnit.Expensive tests tend to want to do many assertions in one case.Then you end up with this, where everything's crammed into one test case:test "generic desc" do # many set up steps # asserting thing one assert(one_thing == "one") # asserting ...

How to see your PR from the terminal using git.With git, we can clone. We have a local copy. Then we push changes upstream. Often we're doing a pull request to the upstream source. Often this is somewhere like Github. And often pull request reviews are done via a github.com web ui. Have you ever, in...

Projects establish patterns, or ways of doing things. Patterns are made in implementation (ie, code or interface) and design (ie, choices made that led to those implementations).I'm talking little-p patterns generally, not Gang of Four Patterns or anything like them.Projects without patterns are mes...

Can we code a modal dialog with CSS only? No.State of the specAs of this writing:Now there's an HTML dialog element that has baseline browser support.People still want a way to open it via HTML.People in that thread were dismissive and indicate that commandfor and command attributes will allow such ...

Here's how to thread both first and last and middle in a single Clojure thread expression.If the output of one form is passed to the input of the next in a long chain, it's often nice to express this as a thread.Thread firstIf, for every form in the thread, you always want to pass the output as the ...

When AI spits something out, you better understand it before you use it.If you don't...How will you know if it's the right thing to do?What are you expecting your code reviewer to do?How will you answer any questions about the code?How do you judge if there are any bugs in it?How do you know if it's...

Here's how to install the best Elixir language server, lexical, for nvim.Frankly, the first part of this article is not needed by most, because there's already a great installation guide for lexical.I like keeping a record of important things that I've done in my dev experience, so this is for me. B...

Here's a way to create an in-memory cache in Elixir. Fun!Use caseI thought I needed Redis. But, like many other things, Erlang OTP can handle that for you. Simplify the stack!Erlang (and thus Elixir) has what's called Erlang Term Storage (ETS). It's an in-memory store. When you create a cache table ...

What is the order of null in sql? Nestle in close, and I'll tell you.Showdev=# SELECT 1 AS value UNION SELECT null AS value ORDER BY value desc; value ------- 1 (2 rows) dev=# SELECT 1 AS value UNION SELECT 0 AS value ORDER BY value desc; value ------- 1 0 (2 rows)Tellasc means smaller to biggerdesc...

An AI is not inspired because a computer doesn't have a soul.AI has a limited ability to inspire.Humans are better-inspired by other inspired humans.The human soulHumans have an inner spirit. When we give expression to our inspiration, we create in the world what had started on the inside. My though...

How to pick which parts of what files you want to stage in git.Stage everythingOften, we want to stage and then commit all our changes in git. To change everything in the working directory,git add .Stage selectivelyTo stage selectively, git allows us an interactive interface for staging. Add the -i ...