#dev

• Fri, Aug 22, 2025. DSPy auto-optimizes prompts based on input-output pairs or evals. Typical improvements are ~10-20%. My opinion: avoid. It's a good idea, but has too much abstraction that hides the implementation. Worth learning from but not implementing. #automation #dev #gpu #markdown #optimization #prompt-engineering #prediction

• Wed, Aug 20, 2025. The skills AI coding needs are very similar to tech-lead's or an architect's. Tanika Gupta #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #future #prompt-engineering
  • Estimating tool capability & task allocation
  • Task breakdown
  • Spec-ing: which of user personas, user-journey maps, wireframes, technical architecture, psuedo-code
  • Standards: tech stack, tools, linters, security, doc standards
  • Git versioning & collaboration
  • Code review. (Using AI.) Providing feedback. Modularity, naming, ...
  • Automated validation
  • Post-mortem. Learning from errors and successes, choices LLM made

• Sat, Aug 16, 2025. Developers are encoding their entire SDLC workflow into Claude commands ChatGPT #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #github #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • Commands are used for:
    • Requirements: Research sub-agent, task breakdown into todos.md, creating specs.md from todos.md
    • Progress tracking: session logging, effort tracking, updating status, planning next steps
    • Project setup: initializing, adding deps, scaffolding features
    • Development: code review, debug error (five whys), explain code, refactor code
    • Optimization: optimize build, DB, caching
    • Testing: TDD, generate test cases, set up unit/integration/E2E testing, analyze coverage
    • Security: security audits, dependency vulnerability scans
    • Integration: sync tasks between GitHub and Linear (two-way issue synchronization, PR linking)
    • Deployment: prepare releases, hotfix deploys, rollbacks, containerization, CI pipeline setup
  • Patterns of usage
    • Sub-agents
    • Command handoffs, i.e. one command invoking another
    • Shared among a team in a repo, enforcing standards & sharing best practices
    • Integration with specific tools / APIs (e.g. Linear)

• Sat, Aug 16, 2025. DataGen. Create a synthetic data generator tool. #code-agents #dev #markdown #prompt-engineering #medium
  1. User enters their scenario in textbox (e.g. "Synthetic data to demonstrate credit card fraud using transaction data. Mid-sized, multiple tables, complex. Excel file")
  2. Click "Submit". This should send the scenario to an LLM asking it to
     • Think carefully and identify a schema, stating assumptions (e.g. number of rows to generate, table/column inter-relationships, output file format, etc.)
     • List typical real-world behaviors that could be incorporated into the data and will lead to positive results when testing these hypotheses (e.g. transactions over $10,000 are more likely to be declined, overseas transactions in low-income countries have high failure rates, etc.)
     • Write Python code that generates a random dataset in line with the above, writes the output to a bytestream and returns the filename and bytestream
  3. Stream the response. Render it as markdown. Use highlightjs to syntax-highlight the code block using a dark theme.
  4. Run the code in the browser using Pyodide, generate the output, and allow the user to download it
  5. Allow the user to enter changes in their scenario. Have the LLM make changes to the code by sending the change and the original response. Repeat from step 3.

• Sat, Aug 16, 2025. IDEA Live coding asset talks #ai-coding #best-practices #code-agents #dev #future #github #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • Delete-Driven Development. Keep deleting code until it fails, then rebuild minimally.
  • No-Editor Coding. Pure prompting to build, test, and deploy the app.
  • Audience-Sourced Prompt ETF. Collect micro-prompts from audience. Run in parallel. Evaluate against tests. Create index of top prompts. Compare with expert.

• Sat, Aug 16, 2025. IDEA Premortem failing tests first. LLM runs a pre-mortem, generate tests that fail first, and THEN writes the code. #ai-coding #dev #future #github #llm-ops #prompt-engineering

• Wed, Aug 13, 2025. A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a hybrid role, part software engineer, part product manager, and part consultant, focused on deeply integrating a company's technology with a specific client's needs. #dev #future #prompt-engineering

• Wed, Aug 13, 2025. Based on what I've seen of AI coding, new developers need to learn these skills. #ai-coding #automation #best-practices #code-agents #dev #prompt-engineering
  • Context engineering
  • Documentation
  • Automated testing
  • Standards
  • Capabilities of platforms
  • Modularity (and DRY vs WET)
  • Code composition
  • Code reviews

• Sun, Jul 27, 2025. AlphaEvolve implemented an evolutionary loop: Given initial code and evaluation code, Gemini 2.0 Flash and Gemini 2.0 Pro suggested changes, stored the revised program in a database, evaluated it, suggested further changes, and repeated the process. With automated evaluation this is a very powerful approach. The Batch #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #future #markdown #optimization #prompt-engineering

• Sun, Jul 27, 2025. Notes from Vedang's AI-Assisted Coding tips & tricks. Ref #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #github #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • claude --debug shows what Claude Code is doing behind a scenes -- and is a good way to understand hidden / undocumented features.
  • At the end of each session, ask Claude Code: "Document learnings. What failed? What worked? What's next?"
  • Have Claude Code write its own prompts by having it launch sub-agents and create common commands in .claude/commands/.
  • Symlink CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md and GEMINI.md into a CONVENTIONS.md
  • Prefer creating tools / writing scripts to analyze data and feed results -- reduces input tokens.

• Wed, Jul 16, 2025. lazygit is a 5-MB TUI that lets you stage/commit/push/diff in one screen #dev #github #markdown

• Thu, Jun 19, 2025. AI coding requires a skilled developer and domain expert to spec and to review. It now makes sense now for devs and users to pair program Simon Willison #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #future #github #prompt-engineering

• Mon, Jun 16, 2025. When vibe-coding, I sometimes change the requirement (e.g. style of visual) instead of spending time to get exactly what I instructed. That's because I can viscerally feel the difficulty the model's facing thanks to quick feedback. A domain expert vibe coding will be able to feel this too. Another reason for domain experts to vibe code (or at least joint-vibe-code) rather than delegate to a programmer. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #future #github #prompt-engineering

• Sat, Jun 14, 2025. ⭐ "Database migrations are like version control for your database." X. dbmate seems like an apt choice. #dev #database #future #markdown

• Thu, Jun 5, 2025. A few observations in AI code editors' styles. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #html #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • O3 is better at finding bugs than Jules, which tends to try and fix them rather than discover them.
  • Codex writes more minimal edits in PRs than Jules, which is more verbose.
  • Claude Code remains the best at faithfully creating and updating front-end apps.

• Sat, May 10, 2025. Vibe coding is like getting others' code to work, which is exactly what most devs do. Simon Willison #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github

• Tue, Apr 22, 2025. DuckDB UI & Notebooks will potentially be a good alternative to Datasette, DBeaver, etc. But for now, there are still glitches. It crashes with a SIGSEGV (Address boundary error) when connecting to SQLite databases. #dev #database #markdown

• Sat, Apr 19, 2025. The devcontainers.json spec encapsulates everything you need to get a codebase running for development - as opposed to production. E.g. VS Code extensions, linters, etc. #dev #markdown

• Sat, Apr 19, 2025. Practical use for GitPod are: #dev #future #github
  • Make quick edits to repos that are not on your system (e.g. other people's repos, or via others' machines.)
  • Run public workshops with a full coding environment.
  • Give students assignments that have dependencies pre-installed.
  • Collaborate on a work-in-progress codebase with my team.
  • Share POCs with clients or public allowing them to edit it.
  • Allow teams to install remote AI code extensions (e.g. Windsurf) that may be blocked inside the corporate firewall?

• Mon, Apr 14, 2025. The dynamic between domain experts and coders has changed. Now, rather than domain experts pitching ideas to developers who build the apps, developers are creating interfaces that allow the domain experts to shape the app. Ref #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Sat, Mar 29, 2025. Discussion with Vedang #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #llm-ops #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • Recurse center (Brooklyn, online) is a 6/12 week free self-driven programmer retreat. Runs every 6 weeks. You can do whatever you pick. There are daily standups for accountability. The groups are diverse. You can pair with them, pivot ideas, whatever. Principles: push yourself & learn.
  • Western education techniques (e.g. spaced repetition, adaptive learning) are very much present in Indian coaching systems, though not known by those names. However, interventions are hard since class 12 students just don't have enough time.
  • Coaching classes are a social phenomenon. It's not the smart students who are pulling in their friends. Smart students actually follow the popular students. (Coaching classes are below the typical smart students' standards.)
  • Monetizing coaching is hard. People don't want to pay for advice, and welcome free advice only if they ask for it. Coupling with execution is necessary.
  • Aider's integrations make it more powerful than Cursor/Windsurf. It auto-lints, runs test cases. Allows different models for "architecting" (generating changes) vs "editing" (applying code). It reads from the screen logs. Context is manual, not automated. Uses an ai! comment to trigger changes and ai? to ask questions.
  • Cline.bot is another Cursor-like open source AI code editor that's a VS Code plugin.
  • When coding with LLMs, a useful workflow is: data schema ➡️ interfaces ➡️ LLM-generated test cases ➡️ code.
  • ShellSage is a tmux based LLM tool for the command line. It screen-grabs from tmux, which is powerful.
  • Some MCPs that have proven useful: vega-lite, SQLite, sequential thinking, memory
  • make sucks but is hard to beat. just comes closest.
  • CRDTs are more powerful than for just collaborative editing. It can power a peer-to-peer Internet (beginning with office tools). Versioning schema is still problematic. yjs is a good start but automerge (Rust, WASM) is faster and may be better.
  • Fermyon hosts WASM serverless functions.

• Tue, Mar 25, 2025. Cursor with Claude 3.7 Max seems surprisingly good at generating multi-page sites at one shot. Potentially, it can edit large repositories of code as well at one shot. If that's the case, the way we write code will require higher order thinking skills: broad sweeping changes rather than micro edits. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #html #markdown #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Sun, Feb 23, 2025. VS Code can be used as a code executor by adding {"key": "shift+enter", "command": "workbench.action.terminal.runSelectedText", "when": "editorFocus"} to the keybindings.json file. Press Shift-Enter to run the selection on the terminal. Useful for DuckDB, SQLite, etc. Ref #dev #markdown

• Sat, Jan 11, 2025. Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4 is a framework for measuring developer productivity. It encapsulates other frameworks like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx. #best-practices #dev #markdown

• Thu, Dec 26, 2024. Learnings from Best of 2024 in Agents (from on SWE-Bench Full, Prof. Graham Neubig of OpenHands/AllHands) #code-agents #dev #github #prompt-engineering #1
  • Passing code execution as a tool is more powerful than granular tools. You combine multiple tools and tool calls into one. You move code to the data rather than the other way around. Mostly, you need bash, Python (or Jupyter), file manager, web browser.
  • UI: Go where the user is, instead of bringing them to you.
  • A remote runtime is a critical component.
  • Claude 3.5 Sonnet (20241022) and Claude 3.5 Haiku (20241022) perform best on SWE Bench, followed by Deepseek V3, then O1 2024-12-17. X

• Mon, Dec 23, 2024. OpenAI introduced a developer role in addition to the system role. This is mainly for o1. The API is backward compatible - and also forward compatible. OpenAI #dev

• Mon, Nov 4, 2024. Zed.dev is an AI code editor by the creators of Atom. It's written in Rust and is blazing fast. It has native AI integration. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #markdown

• Mon, Nov 4, 2024. Creating a LLM-as-a-Judge That Drives Business Results by Hamel Husain. #best-practices #dev #llm-ops #prompt-engineering
  • Get THE domain expert (or approver) as the tester.
  • Create a dataset that is DIVERSE.
  • Covers EACH combination of:
    • Features
    • Scenarios: e.g. multiple matches, no match, ambiguous request, invalid/incomplete input, unsupported feature, system error
    • Persona: e.g. new user, expert user, non-native speaker, busy professional, technophobe, elderly user
  • Generate data using existing data + synthetic data for each SPECIFIC combination of the above
  • Evaluate based only on PASS/FAIL with a CRITIQUE detailed enough for a new employee. Include:
    • Nuances: Something a failed response did well or a passed response didn't quite do well
    • Improvements: Suggest how model can improve
  • Build an SPA to make it easy for the domain expert to review

• Mon, Oct 28, 2024. GH CLI is quite good for deployment too, like Wrangler CLI. Enabling pages, setting secrets, etc. #dev #github #prompt-engineering

• Sun, Oct 6, 2024. Continue.dev is another AI coding editor. It supports OpenRouter. So now I have heard good things about: #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #prompt-engineering
  • Github Copilot
  • Cursor
  • Cody
  • Continue.dev (supports OpenRouter)
  • Aider (supports OpenRouter)
  • Maybe:
    • Codeium
  • Not:
    • Amazon Q Developer

• Fri, Oct 4, 2024. Software 2.0 by Andrej Karpathy. #automation #dev #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • This is fundamentally altering the programming paradigm by which we iterate on our software, as the teams split in two:
    • the 2.0 programmers (data labelers) edit and grow the datasets, while
    • a few 1.0 programmers maintain and iterate on the surrounding training code infrastructure, analytics, visualizations and labeling interfaces.
  • Adaptive UI ideas:
    • Adaptive Fields: Show only required fields based on what the user field so far.
    • Smart Inputs: Dropdowns and auto-complete based on user's context.
    • Smart Themes: Change font size, contrast, theme guessing the user's age and preferences.
    • Dynamic Menus: Show what they might need to do next. Like Nokia's right button, but using LLMs.
    • Smart Tooltips: Check what the user's doing (delays, confusions, previous clicks, current actions) and show relevant tips.
    • Personalized Layout: Show only the relevant sections of the app. E.g. based on what they're doing.
    • Smart Charts: Create the right chart that solve the user's question.
  • Adaptive Back-end
    • Dynamic APIs: Create endpoints on the fly based on user needs
    • Dynamic Indexing: Create & update indices on the fly based on user needs
    • Dynamic Schema: Create & update schema on the fly based on user needs
    • Dynamic Migration: Migrate to a new database or OS or language as required
    • Dynamic Queries: Create SQL/NoSQL queries to solve the user problem
    • Dynamic RBAC: Figure out who needs permissions and why. Add OR REMOVE access as required
    • Dynamic Logging. Log what's required. Explain why it's logged and what's happening. Fix code that raised the error
    • Dynamic Caching. Cache what's likely to be required. Evict what may not be required. Figure out cache keys.

• Thu, Oct 3, 2024. Devika is an open-source clone of Devin. #dev

• Wed, Oct 2, 2024. DuckDB runs inside Pyodide #dev

• Mon, Sep 30, 2024. Coders are more likely to edit LLM code. Non-coders don't have that bad habit. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #llm-ops #markdown
  • Vaishnavi and Ranjeet edited code
  • Indal and Koustav didn't

• Fri, Sep 20, 2024. Prompt engineering for code generators: #code-agents #dev #future #markdown #prompt-engineering #write
  • Claude Artifacts Prompt
  • Val.Townie system prompt. Good example of how to create
  • Cursor editing
  • Cursor debugging
  • Cursor conversation

• Sat, Aug 31, 2024. Val.town's code generation system prompt uses https://maxm-imggenurl.web.val.run/the-description-of-your-image to dynamically generate images #dev #image-generation

• Mon, Aug 12, 2024. Code agent frameworks to explore: #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #dev #future #github #markdown #prompt-engineering
  • Cognition
  • Factory
  • Codegen

• Wed, Apr 17, 2024. Tests and homework have a purpose. It helps people figure out whether they've learnt. So: #best-practices #dev #future #github #write
  • Write tests that make people think! Like DuckDB workshop
  • Share a list of exercises that people can explore

• Sat, Mar 30, 2024. twinny is an open source VC Code Copilot alternative. #ai-coding #dev #future #github

• Tue, Mar 19, 2024. Ways to use inversion #best-practices #dev #future #prompt-engineering #prediction
  • "Pre-mortem" is an analysis at the beginning of how a project failed. Then avoid that
  • "Red team" or "Black hat" are designated to contradict.

• Sun, Feb 25, 2024. demucs does an EXCELLENT job of splitting songs into drums, bass, vocals and others #dev #markdown

• Mon, Feb 19, 2024. Command line interface guidelines #dev #faq

• Sat, Feb 17, 2024. Discussion with Vinu Yamunan #dev #database #llm-ops #todo
  • Databuck by FirstEigen. Autolysis plus monitoring
  • Quality council has the data steward (maintainer of each dataset) coming together with the uses on a weekly basis to understand what quality problems to users are facing. Data owners jaundice at a lower frequency to get an understanding
  • Automate rules for data quality in our projects and intranet
  • Convert a config rule into business language. Explain SQL. These are good use cases for llm's
  • Graph DBs are powerful for flexible data structures, but query generation needs AI or expertise. Check the Neo4J language cypher
  • Explore storing SAME data in relational DBs AND in graph DBs / document DBs for different use cases
  • Dallas rocketry challenge. Build a rocket that can take an egg to 800 feet exactly and land without breaking it

• Mon, Jan 29, 2024. Vanna is a SQL generation LLM. An alternative to SQLCoder. This thread has a detailed discussion on SQL generation and BI #dev

• Sun, Dec 10, 2023. v0.dev creates web pages from code. Example. #dev #future #github #html #markdown #web-dev