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| Happy 12th blogiversary! |
Twelve years to the day I got off my ass and started this blog. Seems unbelievable. In that time, I've bought my own place, gotten married, quit smoking and learned maybe five different languages - not all of them programming ones.
Those familiar with the TeochewThunder tradition will know that October is the month I take a break and gear up for the end of the year.
Tone
I'll begin the year-end retrospective by conceding that I've been making rather inflammatory posts recently. Specifically towards small biz owners.The small business owner and I have a complicated relationship. On one hand, I realize that it isn't easy to run a business, and it's far more pleasurable to be working for a small outfit than a huge one with tons of stifling rules. On the other hand, I hate it when small potatoes give themselves airs... and some of these are tiny spuds acting like they're the shit. When in all likelihood, they're just shit.
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| Tiny spuds. |
Suffice to say, if even one of these fellas reads my stuff and ends up going "fuck this guy", I'd pat myself on the back. Really, what are they gonna do? I'm practically retired.
That said, I've managed to keep the profanity somewhat minimal. Not as minimal as last year, obviously, but I'm proud of myself for the effort. That's not to say I can't be provocative and offensive if I don't swear, because I absolutely fucking can. I just don't want to end up pigeonholing myself.
Speaking of Artificial Intelligence...
Not that anyone asked, but all this content has continued to be written by me. None of this was written by AI. That distinction is important. On Social Media, I've noticed a whole slew of long-winded posts that scream "LLM Vomit".Imperfect as my writing is, it's not that. Sure, I do consult an LLM on content. I run my writing through Claude and ChatGPT and even Gemini. AI checks for typos and unverifiable facts, and cautions me on possible inflammatory speech, and tells me that some people may get their precious feelings hurt. In the final case, I may even smile, and ramp up the offensiveness.
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| You're offended? I'll show you offended. |
All of that is a far cry from letting an LLM generate text for me while I tweak the wording. You may get a lot of crap from me, but you'll never get that kind of crap.
I don't want to give you that stuff, but the fact of the matter is, I couldn't even if I wanted to. Even after feeding the LLMs my writing and asking them to reproduce it, I've yet to find one that even comes close. That's largely because LLMs try to be as correct and inoffensive as possible. And as longtime readers know, these aren't always top on my list of priorities.
Morever, using an LLM for output generation is just superfluous. I'm not in a position where I need those productivity gains. This blog is not for profit; if I can't even be authentic in this situation, that's just sad.
I don't feel quite the same way about AI image generation, though. Because none of you have ever been under any kind of impression that I took those stock photos myself, and generating images gives me what I want without having to hunt endlessly for it. The only difference is that some photographers won't be receiving my paltry monetary thanks, but it isn't as if they would starve otherwise.
Web Tutorials
As mentioned earlier, there was quite a bit of jQuery this year. That's for good reason.There's increasingly little value in using vanilla JavaScript to demonstrate stuff. I have to jump through too many hoops and explain too much. And in this day and age, using getElementById() feels positively primitive. Shit, in this day and age, jQuery isn't particularly cutting edge either.
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| Getting primitive. |
jQuery gets me there faster with less fuss, and sometimes that matters more. After years of using vanilla JavaScript, it's what I cut my teeth on and I'll always have a soft spot for it, but at some point pragmatism needs to win out.
There's also some NodeJS and a bit of VueJS. I'm not an ideologue where code is concerned; whatever works best in the given context gets the nod. But above all, I don't want to be a one-trick pony. That's almost tantamount to career suicide in my industry. Not that I have a long fruitful career to look forward to at the age of 49, but it's the principle of the thing.
Other content
The dry technical content (outside of Web Tutorials) is still present in the blog, but it's been drying up a bit. Not to say I don't still enjoy writing those even though nobody seems to enjoy reading them, if the views are any indication, but I realize that AI could do a far better job than me of explaining that stuff.Still, features like Spot The Bug are still going fairly consistently even though I seem to be doing JavaScript almost exclusively (yes, different frameworks and libraries, but still JavaScript).
One thing I've been doing more of, is lifestyle stuff. Things I've been doing outside of work. It used to be I'd do this a couple times a year by vacationing out of the country, but lately I've found that Singapore can be just as interesting without having to break out my trusty old passport.
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| Wheels, baby, wheels! |
And part of it is just me discovering, after having quit smoking, that I like being allowed in non-smoking areas like parks and nature reserves. Huh. Go figure. Funny the directions life takes us. As it is, I'm discovering a whole new side of Singapore on bicycle. And somehow, part of me just can't stop comparing all this shit to software architecture. It could be that being a software dev has allowed me to appreciate the art of building all this, within the constraints of a tiny island.
Back to Artificial Intelligence
The reason why I've been writing so much about AI is because, love it or hate it, it's hard to simply dismiss it. It's permeating code, Social Media, employment and technology - four subjects this blog tackles regularly.I can't seem to get by a day on YouTube without listening to some take on AI. How LLMs are good, how they're bad, how the AI Bubble is about to burst...
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| Code bubble. |
Also, I have opinions. Shocking, right?
As a software developer, I also have to deal with colleagues and bosses who range from wildly enthusiastic, to cautiously optimistic, to staunchly negative, and none of these positions is inherently wrong, which makes things a lot more interesting than your typical flat earth debate. The situation changes by the day, and that's genuinely intriguing.
For example, right now there's an ongoing Doomsday discussion as to whether AI will bring about the end of humankind by the end of the decade. By the time I publish my two cents on this, it will be November and my perspective will be stale. But whatevs, it's not like the Earth has stopped spinning on its axis waiting for me to release my opinion to the world, eh?
