musings, ramblings, and thoughts from Josh Freedman
I read Simon Willison's blog post, "sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)" this morning and this line stuck out to me WAY more than its technical content: I went out to enjoy the Half Moon Bay 4th of July parade, occasionally checking in and prompting the next step for Fable from my phone. Going to a 4th of July parade, presumably with friends/family/other loved…
At work, I've added a few rich text editors to our product using Lexical . Same underlying component, but different constraints in each place. I thought that, since the library handles all the gnarly stuff, this should be easy. Nope! I want to write a longer post with examples, but my take on how to do this right is: Make the import/export format use HTML Take the HTML and map it to a pandoc AST,…
For the life of me, I can't learn anything the easy way. It doesn't matter how many times I read it or how many times someone tells me, I need to suffer to get it through my thick skull. This usually involves one or more of the following: diving deep into the task/concept at hand, dealing with every nitty-gritty detail fucking something up real bad, especially when I should have known better…
With maybe one exception, stop using AI to write. If your goal is to inform or persuade, relying on AI entirely will muddy your point. AI writing I encounter tends to have one or more of these problems: it's too long there's no obvious train of thought the author is trying to lead you along the thing I need to pull out of it is buried within walls of useless text If your reason for relying on AI…
Consider a "normal" use case for a smartphone: calling, texting/instant messaging, browsing the web, using social media apps, and taking pictures. For those uses, a smartphone 5 years ago is just as good as one today. All you really need is a decent processor and a stable internet/5G connection to get a lot of value from your phone. We've had that for years now. In theory, you should be able to…
I've been sleeping on devcontainers for years. For years, Jetbrains IDEs have been my go-to; they're easy to set up and tend to just work out of the box. Sure, they cost a little money, but it was worth it to me. However, devcontainers in VS Code solve all of the problems I've had with it. Everything is baked into the devcontainer itself. It isn't just build dependencies, but also runtime…
Back when I was in high school, I had a Pebble smartwatch for awhile. I LOVED that thing. I was planning on upgrading to the new one they released, but they'd gone under by the time I was ready to switch. Over the next few years, I switched between an Apple Watch, a FitBit, and then ditched smartwatches altogether. Now, I just wear Casio watches . Well, Pebble's coming back ! Well, not under the…
Three weeks ago, I stopped drinking coffee. One of my friends (hi Morgan, do you read this?) planted the seed. I don't quite remember the reasoning, but I'm so glad I did it. I feel soooo much better. My brain fog has almost entirely been lifted. I can think again! I do find myself wanting it again, but it's not a habit I want to fall back into yet. I like how I feel much more than I want coffee.…
I've never felt the same enthusiasm about AI that basically the whole world seems to feel. The practical use I've gotten out of AI tools is fairly limited: some simple code snippets and maybe a couple ideas for D&D. Nothing I'm particularly impressed with, to be honest. The rise of "vibe coding" gives me some pause, too. Part of me, the insecure part, wants to try it out for myself. Maybe I can…
When I was a kid, my elementary and middle school would give every us planners. We were expected to have our parents sign it every night and record due dates and whatnot. Naturally, as a kid with ADHD, I didn't do that shit. It was boring! Why write anything down when I would just remember it? I wouldn't, but it didn't feel like I would forget. Oh snap, I forgot to ask my mom to sign it. I'll just…