Weeknotes 213

After moaning about Castro (to myself, then to friends, and here) I decided to contact their support over a weird issue I’ve been having when using it via CarPlay. They said they were going to revisit. We’ll see.

Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 (an update)

The fundamental requirement for the LLM to be used is: don’t use agents or things like editor with integrated coding agents.

This is interesting as it goes directly against how most people are recommending getting the most out of AI, but I find myself also leaning towards this way of working.

Maybe I’m a control freak, but unscrambling and trying to understand why the agent has done can take me longer than stepping through manually without an agent.

git-quick-stats.sh – This might be handy for those of you still counting lines as the greatest contribution to a project. You know who you are ;)

We visited Blackpool on Monday (it was near where we were picking the chair up from). If you have nothing good to say don’t say anything at all, however, highlights were the very fancy car park in the centre, and the massive Tesco Extra - really, it has to be seen to be believed.

The chair, unbelievably, did fit inside my car although it was touch and go for a few minutes – it was looking unlikely until we flipped it over.

Getting it inside the house when we got home was a different matter. I was clearly focussing on the wrong aperture. Thankfully we managed to get it through the front bay window which is much wider than our front door. Then we needed to get it up two more floors - we left that ’til the next day. It was a struggle, but we eventually managed it.

I have to keep it now.

It was slightly grubby in places, but overall condition is good, and I’ve now cleaned it up using a foam based cleaner which is fun if nothing else.

Introducing the deposit return scheme for drinks containers – this seems like a good sensible thing which is why it’s even more surprising that it’s happening. The devil will be in the detail though.

Authorization Bugs Are Having Their SQL Injection Moment

Why? Because every authorization check is unique to your business logic

This does not surprise me. We still ignore the basics. No one gets praise for getting the basics right.

[ANN] Rails 0.5.0: The end of vaporware!

I’ve been talking (and hyping) Rails for so long that it’s all wierd to finally have it out in the open. Mind you, we’re still not talking about a 1.0 release, but the package currently on offer is still something I’m very comfortable to share with the world. Undoubtedly, there could be more documentation and more examples, but Real Artists Ship and this piece will grow in public. Enjoy Rails!

Time really does fly.

“Errors found in US judge’s withdrawn decision stink of AI”

The opinion cited made-up quotes and misstated case outcomes, errors that AI tools are known to hallucinate.

Here we fucking go. Jesus.

Completing the State of HTML 2025 survey was a sobering activity for someone who is supposedly a web developer. I don’t even HTML anymore.

I’ve started counselling again. Hopefully I can sort myself out before financial and mental ruin sets in.