#AI for software engineers

[upgradenterprise]

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[nixcraft]

Vibe coding in a nutshell

[fullstackonion]

It’s the tail end of the workday. The rain taps gently against the windows, and I’ve wrapped up everything I needed to accomplish—at least for today. With nothing left but time, I find myself drifting. My mind, ever restless, reaches for something softer, something outside the strict grids of corporate life.

Lately, I’ve been training an AI of my own making. It’s still learning—still clumsy with its lines and slow with its renderings—but it manages. It’s not the most accurate, and certainly not the fastest out there, but it feels personal. It’s mine.

This image is one of its early outputs.

But the story behind it? That’s not AI-generated. That comes from the noisy corners of my own mind—my unquiet mind—looking for meaning, creativity, and a moment of stillness just fifteen minutes before I step out the door.

Sometimes, this is how I unwind. And maybe, just maybe, this is how I begin to breathe again.

"Orange Peel Theory"

It begins as a habit. A rhythm.

After the conclave, life within the Vatican resumes its deliberate pace. The halls quiet again, the thunder of election giving way to the hush of governance. Vincent, now Pope, presides with calm resolve. And at his side are the trusted few: Aldo Bellini, still Secretary of State; Goffredo Tedesco, still the Patriarch of Venice; Thomas Lawrence; Giulio Sabbadin; Raymond O'Malley—all orbiting in their appointed places.

Goffredo’s place is always beside Aldo.

Not by rule. Just… always.

It starts with simple things.

An extra coffee left on Aldo’s desk just before morning session—one sugar, no cream, just the way he drinks it, though Aldo never asks for it. A coat quietly laid on the back of his chair before a chill evening meeting. Notes discreetly rearranged in his folder so that the report he’ll most likely need is on top. A seat saved without a word in crowded halls.

Nothing romantic. Nothing declared. But steady. Thoughtful. Like a hand placed softly on the small of your back, guiding, never pushing.

Aldo never acknowledges them.

But the others do.

Raymond sees the coat. Giulio notices the coffee. Thomas watches the way Goffredo hovers for a second longer when Aldo stands to speak, eyes briefly lingering.

Then comes the orange.

It is a long meeting in the Papal apartments. Rain flicks the high windows like impatient fingers. The Cardinals, the Holy Father, the inner circle—they’re all there. The table is heavy with old papers and heavier politics.

At the corner of the room, quietly, Goffredo peels an orange. His fingers move methodically, slicing the rind in a single winding coil. The scent lifts, soft and sweet.

He places a wedge of the fruit on Aldo’s open notebook, without a word, and continues peeling.

Aldo glances down once. Then, without interrupting his own sentence, picks up the slice and eats it. Calmly. Thoughtlessly. Like it had always been there.

Across the table, Vincent pauses in the middle of stirring his tea. His eyes slide toward Goffredo.

Goffredo doesn’t look up. He’s still peeling.

Raymond blinks. Giulio leans toward Thomas with a tiny smirk. No one says a thing.

Later, as the room clears and the meeting ends, Vincent lingers.

“You’ve chosen a peculiar form of diplomacy, Patriarch,” he says as he walks past Goffredo.

Goffredo only raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean, Holiness.”

Vincent smiles. “Of course not.”

Weeks pass. The orange becomes a ritual. So do the quiet kindnesses. Still no reaction from Aldo—no thanks, no glances, no changes in tone.

Until Goffredo misses a morning.

He is late—held up by a call from Venice. When he finally walks in, slightly breathless, the meeting is already underway.

Aldo, seated, does not turn. But there, resting beside his papers, is an orange. Half-peeled. Spiral cut. One wedge already eaten.

Goffredo stops in the doorway.

Thomas sees it. Giulio catches Goffredo’s expression and gently kicks Raymond under the table.

The Patriarch moves to his seat slowly.

Aldo doesn’t look at him. But as he turns the page in his file, his hand brushes lightly—just once—against Goffredo’s.

And for the first time in a very long while, Goffredo forgets how to breathe.

[paradoxcase]

The original history of the Mechanical Turk, which was a supposed mechanical man who could play chess with you from the Middle Ages which actually turned out to be a human chess player in a mechanical man suit, has officially repeated itself and we now have Mechanical Turk, 2025 edition (don't talk to me about Amazon Mechanical Turk, that's a whole other post for a whole other day):

This company claimed they had some AI tool that could build apps for you, but apparently what they actually had was 700 software engineers who would build apps for you. Microsoft invested almost a half a billion dollars into this company, and then when they found about this, they pulled out and now the company is declaring bankruptcy.

This is being portrayed as some kind of fraud, and it kind of is, in that they were basically profiteering off of AI hype, but like, being able to hire 700 software engineers to build an app for you is not nothing. It's not worthless. They probably make way better apps than any AI process could make.

The main thing I am taking away from this is that Microsoft is willing to spend half a billion dollars on an AI that builds apps, but is not willing to spend half a billion dollars on 700 human beings that build apps much better than the AI could. Doesn't that just tell you everything about the software industry right now?

[leng-m]

I found out today that my workplace is now asking interview candidates how they feel about AI. My work has become an absolute staunch supporter of generative AI lately and is pressuring everyone to incorporate it into their daily work. Chatting with a few workmates, I am baffled that I'm the only one who seems to have any reservations about this. (I talked with my manager today and he wasn't even aware of all the ethical issues with it! Shocker!)

I want to clarify that I'm not categorically against all AI. I majored in compsci and I did my masters on machine learning. But the things I wanted to build with this skill set are things like anomaly detection and pattern recognition. I get excited about tools like spam filters and accurate search engines. There's a place for generative AI, like with GANs, but I believe that the way it's being wielded now by the industry is just soul-sucking.

My company has heavily hinted that there's no future for anyone there who isn't willing to jump on the genAI bandwagon; rather shocking as it was up until that point, the most employee-friendly company I've worked at so far. I'd hate to lose the comprehensive health benefits it provides at a time I'm dealing with a chronic illness. And even if I did leave, the darlings of the Toronto tech scene had made it clear genAI is their future -- everyone else is going to be copying them. I don't think there's any job that's safe from the AI infiltration.

So I want to ask you guys. If you're at a company that's now forcing you to use genAI, how are you using it in a way that still lets you sleep at night?

[ottopilot-sfw]

Vibe coding something. This shit is supposed to take my job? All y'all are fucked. We are all fucked.

[nando161mando]

Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet

https://www.yahoo.com/news/software-engineer-lost-150k-job-090000839.html

[smak-annihilation]

yeah sorry guys but the machine escaped containment and is no longer in my control or control of any human. yeah if it does anything mortifying it's on me guys, sorry

[querade]

things i experienced with my delightfully nerdy older brother during the holidays

Older brother: So, what happens when they run out of dinosaur to make Dino nuggets? Dad: They’ll go extinct. Him: Hang on - do we have enough DNA for gene sequencing dinosaurs? Could we actually make Dino meat in a lab? Dad: Course we can! Haven’t you ever seen Jurassic Park? ___________________________ Him, a software engineer, getting off a three hour meeting about developing an AI program, and then spending five minutes trying to toast a bagel in a toaster oven bc the picture at the bottom explaining how to do it was too complicated ___________________________ Me: what do you know about the Higgs-Boson particle? Older Brother: Well, I know what a boson is but every time I’ve actually studied it I’ve felt like a boson myself. ____________________________ Dad: Get in, the car has butt warmers! Him: OOOH, will they make my butt look hot?

_____________________________

reblog to make him happy

[antifataylorswift]

The developers i work with are asking chatgpt questions about my infrastructure that are in our docs. Unsurprisingly they are getting bad advice for our particular setup, and are bothering my team with a bunch of questions about if the advice is right and what would happen if they ran those commands.

[learn-ai-free]

OpenAI Releases Codex: A Software Agent that Operates in the Cloud and Can Do Many Tasks in Parallel

OpenAI has released a research preview of Codex, a cloud-based software engineering agent that's not just another code completion tool. Codex is a cloud-based software-engineering agent that turns on isolated sandboxes, pulls your repo, and chips away at features, bug fixes, test suites, and even pull-request boilerplates—often in parallel.

What is OpenAI Codex? 📌

→ Cloud-based software engineering agent

→ Can write features, answer codebase questions, run tests, and propose Pull Requests for review

→ Each task runs in its own isolated cloud environment

→ Provides detailed terminal logs, test outputs, and citations

→ Users can create AGENTS.MD files in their repository to instruct Codex on project-specific commands, testing procedures, and coding standards

→ Powered by codex-1

How to use Codex: 📌

→ Users can access Codex through the ChatGPT sidebar

→ Assign coding tasks by typing a prompt

→ Each request is handled independently

→ Codex can read and edit files and run commands like test suites, linters, and type checkers

→ Task completion generally takes between one and thirty minutes

Once done, Codex runs its changes within its sandboxed environment, which users can then review, ask for more changes, open a GitHub PR, or pull the changes into their local setup.

↗️ Full Read: https://aiagent.marktechpost.com/post/openai-releases-codex-a-software-agent-that-operates-in-the-cloud-and-can-do-many-tasks-in-parallel

Codex: Availability 📌

Codex is currently rolling out to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team users, with access for Plus and Edu users planned to come soon.

[nixcraft]

Imagine being this stupid to drink Kool-Aid and giving a remote LLM tool full access to your codebase, and, in many cases, not maintaining backups or using proper Git with permissions. How these guys are getting hired to write code is beyond me.

[fullstackonion]

On The Way Home

It’s time to go home. I’m on the shuttle now, watching the traffic crawl by—thick, slow, heavy. The kind of traffic that makes time feel like soup, and not the good kind. I need something to preoccupy myself other than music, because if I rely on that alone, I’ll end up staring blankly out the window and wondering what year it is. God knows what time I’ll actually get home tonight.

It’s raining, too.

I should feel sad. Maybe I am, a little. Not in a heavy way—more like in the “my shoes are wet and I’m silently panicking” kind of way. They’re my favorite suede deck shoes, and the thought of them getting stained hurts more than it probably should. But here I am, hoping for dry miracles in Batangas' monsoon season.

I’m rambling, I know. These are just empty thoughts floating around in my head. Still, I wanted to steal this little moment to write—think of it as my “on-the-way-home” entry. One more to follow before bed, I think. I already have it mapped out in my head, but I’m saving that one for later. For now, this will do.

JIRO is doing great, by the way. That’s my AI—my little clumsy digital assistant who makes me laugh with how he interprets my thoughts into pictures. Sometimes he gets it so wrong it’s endearing, and sometimes… he surprises me. My hope is that with time, training, and a little bit of patience, he’ll get better. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? Of creation. Of making something that tries to understand you. Right now, JIRO’s just drawing how he sees it. But the goal is to one day have him see it how I mean it.

We’re drifting off-topic.

But then again, this is a diary. I’m allowed to ramble here.

If you’re reading—thank you. Thank you for your patience. I haven’t written like this in a long time. I stopped after college, really. Life happened. Work happened. Almost five years into being a corporate girly, I guess I just needed something to keep me grounded. Something that wasn’t deadlines and KPIs.

And then—Tumblr again. Like an old friend who doesn’t ask why you left.

I don’t have many pleasures in this mortal world. Just a few: photography, food, music, and writing. That’s it. I code for a living, but that’s not the same. Coding is my bread of life, sure—but it’s not the air I breathe. It feeds me, yes. But it doesn’t nourish me.

Writing, though? Like music and photographs? It’s oxygen. It’s soul food.

So yeah.

Onward with the story we go.

Orange Peel Theory: "Where He Sat"

The refectory was already half full when Goffredo entered.

The soft clatter of porcelain and murmured Latin prayers filled the air like incense. Cardinals stirred tea. Monsignors read their briefings over bread. The morning sun cut long lines through the stained-glass windows, bathing the hall in diluted gold.

Goffredo paused just inside the door.

He wasn’t late. He wasn’t early. But this time—for the first time in years—he had nowhere else to be.

Luca, ever diligent, gestured toward his usual seat near the window—far enough from the others to keep conversation optional. Predictable. Safe.

But Goffredo didn’t move toward it.

Instead, he walked the length of the hall—down the center aisle, past Thomas who raised his brow just slightly, past Giulio who nudged Raymond beneath the table.

And then he stopped.

Beside Aldo.

Aldo, already seated, was halfway through his tea. He didn’t look up immediately. He didn’t need to. The moment held itself like an unspoken breath.

Goffredo pulled out the chair.

Sat down.

Said nothing.

Aldo finally glanced sideways, only for a second. “They served the orecchiette again.”

“I noticed.”

“They made it with pecorino, not parmigiano.”

Goffredo allowed the faintest smirk. “The sisters must be losing their touch.”

Aldo tilted his head, deadpan. “Or maybe they were asked to change it.”

Goffredo cut a piece of bread. “How presumptuous of them.”

“I’ve been told I have influence.”

A flicker of a laugh—not full, not loud, but real.

And in that moment, everyone in the room saw it.

Not because they spoke. Not because they touched.

But because Goffredo Tedesco did not sit by the window.

And Aldo Bellini did not look surprised.

Vincent, seated at the far end of the room, watched them for a moment longer than necessary.

He didn’t say a word.

Just turned a page in his briefing and smiled—barely.

[munaeem]

The Future of Software Engineering: What 2025 Holds

The landscape of software engineering is rapidly evolving. It is shaping up to be as exciting as it is transformative. Gone are the days when coding was solely the domain of dedicated programmers tucked away in dimly lit offices. Today, we’re entering a new era. Artificial intelligence is changing how we approach software development. Real-time computing is also a key factor. Additionally, the…

[mentalisttraceur-software]

I predict that an easy big across-the-board LLM reasoning improvement is to prompt the LLM to argue against every point it makes.

Ideally you have it then argue against those arguments, and so on. Have some stopping condition like "until you cannot think of counter arguments that are better than the previous arguments." But I think even just one iteration of arguing against itself will be an improvement on average.

With existing models, you probably need to do this as two messages, so that the model first gives you the best reasoning it can think of, instead of the easier path of predicting more easily refutable arguments to refute, since those are almost certainly going to be more common in the training data.

[paradoxcase]

Try not to sound like a sci-fi supervillain in your job listing challenge: impossible