The latest posts from Samuel Sutch's website.
As a software engineer, my entire professional life has become AI slop. Every line of every pull request? Slop. Every word of every pull request description? Slop. Every code review comment? Slop. Every technical design document? Slop. Every ticket description? Slop. Every graphical design spec? Slop. I know I’m not alone in this experience. From what I can ascertain by discussing with peers,…
For the past five months I have been coding almost exclusively with AI coding assistants, and I am worried how it has affected my psychology. First, some quick backstory. While taking an extended “break” from a 9-5 job, I started [Roam](https://roamhq.com), a social network focused on off road exploration in vehicles. It’s like Strava but for things you do in your car. This is an idea I had last…
Resizing user-provided images is a very common yet exceedingly difficult task to get right. Over the dozen or so companies I've worked at, I've probably implemented it at least ten different times. Of all those different implementations, it's likely that exactly zero were technically correct. My new venture, [Roam](https://roamhq.com), is an activity sharing app for vehicular exploration. As a…
Let's set the scene: you're an aging "software professional," and it's holiday break. You and your family are immobilized due to seasonal illnesses. You live in the pacific northwest in the USA, and on a good day, you'll get 15 minutes of daylight. You're tired of building feature after feature for a soulless corporation. You get the idea to start your blog back up. Dammit, you have things to say!…
Not only is this my first post on the new site, the first in several years, but it will also be my first "year in review" ever. Heck it, why not. Having read many such posts across the web, I've been inspired to write one of my own, particularly because it's been such an interesting year. Going forward, whether a given year is net good or bad, I intend to write one of these wrap up posts, even if…
I’ve been doing some soul searching over the past few months. I’ve been depressed, which went unnoticed until recently. Spontaneously, the thought materialized in my head: I’m not that happy, and I need to be happy with my life again. Simple enough, right? Maybe not. Let’s go on a short journey that many of us might not realize we share. Symptomatically the depression I’m experiencing is common,…
I quit high school within a month of my first day as a freshman. I still attended, but participated at absolutely the most minimal level. My grades reflected this participation. High school wasn’t rewarding to me, and every day felt like I was unemotionally going through the movements of being a teenager. In the evenings I worked a job at my fathers print shop. During the nights I learned to…