I'm a software developer and former teacher based in Boston. I'm working on Pickcode , an online IDE for mid...
Disclaimers I am not a business or AI expert, just a chart enthusiast and programmer I run an online coding platform for education with features that are inspired by “old Replit” If you are tired of reading about AI, please close this tab and don’t yell at me! Background Replit has always been a site for writing code online, and eventually transitioned to a platform for hosting code, then a fully…
Disclaimers This is an article about AI. If you’re tired of talking about AI please close this tab and don’t yell at me! I’m not an economist, or an AI expert, just a chart enthusiast and programmer. Definitions “Software” is a program that runs on your computer that allows you to accomplish a task. Software is “good” if it frequently allows you to accomplish said task without too much trouble.…
Disclaimers This is an article about AI. If you’re tired of talking about AI please close this tab and don’t yell at me! I’m not an economist, or an AI expert, just a chart enthusiast and programmer. In this post, I focus on OpenAI’s progress to simplify the story. There are other labs working on related work, and the GPT series of models are far from the only important LLMs. OpenAI’s model…
Bs in Blueberry There were screenshots of a classic LLM issue floating around Bluesky after the GPT-5 launch yesterday, and I asked GPT-5 myself to confirm. Sam Altman touted GPT-5 as a “PhD level expert in your pocket”, but this PhD doubled down on incorrectly answering the oldest trick for LLMs in the book. When GPT-4 launched, I (and many others) believed that GPT-5's launch would be the “AGI…
Intro I’ve played the clarinet since 5th grade, and since then have spent a lot of time playing music. I’ve also spent a lot of time writing software. My motivation here is to make an analogy between prompt engineering and music, with the goal of shedding some insight into the limitations of today’s AI. I believe that claims about the automation of software engineering or white collar work are…
Background In Fall 2013, I enrolled in Comp 11, my college’s intro programming course. I had intended on studying political science, but “computer” quickly replaced "political" and I’ve been coding ever since. After that first semester, I spent considerable time as a TA for Comp 11 and other courses. By the time I’d left college, I had spent hundreds of hours working with novice programmers. Being…
It's been a fun ride here on blog.charliemeyer.co, but most of my posts on coding education will now be posted on the Pickcode Blog . If you'd like to support my work and continue getting regular updates, please subscribe via email there! While I won't post as often on here, I am certainly keeping all existing posts up. Also, when I want to post about random stuff like Yahtzee, license plates, or…
(This post is now also listed at the Pickcode Blog ) Pickcode is the code editor for education that I’ve been working on for the past few years. It supports several languages including Python, Java, and Javascript. For many of our student users, Pickcode is the first piece of software they’ll use to write code (excluding stuff like Scratch). The goal of this post is to explain why our product…
A musician sight-reads a piece when they play it from the sheet music for the first time. Depending on their experience level and the difficulty of the piece, sight-reading can have mixed results. This variability in quality is extended considerably when an entire ensemble attempts to sight-read a piece – key signature changes can be missed, players can miss entrances, etc. While sight-reading is…
What is Yahtzee Summary of the rules of Yahtzee if you haven’t played Yahtzee is a light hearted and quick game, including elements of both skill and chance. Within a few games, you can develop enough understanding to play reasonably well. Due to the large element of chance, it’s hard to invest too much of your ego in the game. Recently, I spent some time writing a Yahtzee solver [1]. My solver…