In a thread on a Swedish forum for tabletop role-players, someone asked for help with dice probabilities. A basic question involving two six-sided dice. Two replies came in almost instantly with a correct solution supported by mathematical/probability arguments. You can say they “gave a man a fish”, referring to the classic proverb. I was thinking … Continue reading Feed a man for a lifetime — AI version
Category: Software
To build and use software.
Time for the yearly salary adjustment?
It's a slow January morning after the holidays. A mail to all employees lands in your mailbox announcing the yearly salary adjustment. A fixed percentage that applies to everyone. Hands up if you have worked for a company that used this trick. One company I worked for sent out this mail the morning after the … Continue reading Time for the yearly salary adjustment?
Age of Slop
Our internet provider proudly announced their new ai chatbot. The link to unsubscribe was broken so I asked the bot how to unsubscribe. The answer had little resemblance to the Swedish UI but at least it gave me the idea to log in and look around until I found the setting I needed. We live … Continue reading Age of Slop
Going to the office
I’ve started a new job. While I have the option of hybrid work, I am working full time from the office, five days per week. Going to the office is fantastic for onboarding. Onboarding is stressful Onboarding is stressful. You have so many assumptions about how things are and what you will be doing for … Continue reading Going to the office
I blog therefore I am
Two recent events triggered me to reflect on how I use social media. In this post I recap my history of social media use, present my current choice, and conclude with why social media are here to stay and why they are so hard to get right.
PNG is not GIF
Restrictions spur creativity. Perception shapes reality. Or why you don't want to get on the wrong side of your users. In the early days of the internet, GIF was the prevailing file format for website graphics. While JPEG is great for compressing photos, GIF (Graphical Image File) is a lossless encoding that works great when … Continue reading PNG is not GIF
How do you like your coffee?
How do you like your coffee? If you are like me, the answer is Hot as Hell, black as the Devil. No milk, no sugar. And absolutely not the lukewarm poor excuse for coffee served with every lunch deal here in Stockholm. Or perhaps you prefer tea? On Mars? Why not. Now you can make … Continue reading How do you like your coffee?
Office or remote?
The pandemic showed that software engineers can work productively from home. But most of us have also realised that working remotely is hard to sustain as a healthy business operating model. So what is the recipe for success in post pandemic software engineering?
GitHub Copilot: How does it feel?
AI is like teenage sex. Everyone talks about it. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it. When you try it, it is not such a big deal after all. I decided to try out GitHub Copilot to understand what it can do and what all the hype is about.
Great software
At a recent interview I was asked: What is good code? While I have written code professionally since 1999, I think a more interesting question is: What is great software? While the source code important, it doesn’t live in a vacuum. To write good code, you need to understand the larger context of the system. Reflecting after the interview, here is the answer I would give today.