Dave Smith

Hi 👋 I’m Dave Smith. I’m finally making regular visits to this site 🦋 I’m a software developer, engineer, programmer, or coder. I wrote my first code in 1997 on a TI-86 🧮 I connect with other software people to hear their stories I also share my experiences with my other hobby, running 🏃

Finally got it through my head that AI works better with a goal, a list of constraints, and a list of how to validate done. I had been telling it how to do things and found it often went off the rails badly. This has changed *everything* for me

“A more elegant weapon of a civilized age” vibekeys.dev/vibekeys-max... I think I need this

Had a dream last night where I burned through my entire AI budget because I had an every 15 minute task to refactor the entire code base using Astra, running the entire weekend Terrifying I know the math is wrong, but who does math in their sleep

Here we go Jev

What an incredible week in New York. 2 days at the @leaddev.com LDX3 conference. Still processing all the leadership and AI conversations. 2 days in our NY office spending time with the trading team to see how they use our software in the wild.

Who is at LeadDev in New York?

Happy Mogollon Monster day to those who celebrate. Been a year since I finished the 100 mile run there. Good luck to all the runners today … and tomorrow

This past weekend I ran the Ice Age 50 mile run. This one was pretty special, it was my 10th time finishing 50 miles at that race. I have literally been working on this for over a decade. It was also good to spend time with friends who show up every year

New AI experience today Copilot took about 30 minutes in what would normally take a day or more to code Found out 15 minutes into testing that I missed a subtle but major blindspot in the data. Backing out the code was trivial I didn’t lose a day of writing code ps. there are other lessons too

Used git cherry-pick for the first time. Saved my bacon after I reused a branch that had been merged already

Day 1 Four Roses Single Barrel OBSK Not my favorite four roses. Feels like it is missing some flavor. Probably wouldn’t buy a full bottle #bourbonadvent 🥃

December 1st marks the beginning of Bourbon Advent that I am doing with a few coworkers. I’ve never had most of these before and some I’ve never heard of. Great way to sample a variety! #bourbonadvent 🥃

git reset-base git reset —soft $(git merge-base origin/main HEAD) Soft reset the branch to where it was created. Using it to review PRs with many commits. Also easier to review changes in the IDE Anyone have a better name for this alias?

Helped out a friend this weekend who was running a 200 mile(!) trail race. Ran 18 miles with her overnight and into the morning after a snowstorm came through. What an amazing event to be a small part of. The grit and determination of all the runners was so inspiring

4 days into @gleam.run and it’s starting to grow on me. Tried Elixir a couple of times but didn’t stick. I think the types plus some Go/Rust vibes in the syntax is helping

3 hours later and none of the models I tried could generate json decoding that would compile. This has to be isolated to generating Gleam code. Never seen this with Go or c# I told the robot it was fired

Vibe coding twice today. In Go, collecting all child requests from a web url and grouping by IP. One shotted it with Claude In Gleam, building an API. Neither GPT 4.1 or Gemini couldn’t do json encoding/decoding. Haven’t even done the hard stuff yet Is it Gleam and less data to learn from?

What a great close to @leaddev.com. Met up with a few new friends at a happy hour. I learned so much and can’t wait to come back again

Had a wonderful time at @leaddev.com conference in New York today. Talked with so many good people about the intersection of tech and leadership. Looking forward to more of it tomorrow

I hear every language walking the streets in Manhattan, but the universal language is a horn. On cars and on bikes

Hey all, I’m going to New York City for work this week. Never been there before. Looking for recommendations on what to do while I’m there

Halfway through the first book. Yeah, it’s good. Really like the author’s style

Late night playoff baseball == insomnia

Was in a meeting with tech leaders discussing AI. Many had concerns about AI causing critical thinking skills to decline   To get results from an LLM I have to deeply think about the problem and write about it in detail. Feels like critical thinking, right? What do you think?

Finished up Wheel of Time season 3. wtf. How do they cancel it after that? I have questions that need answers. Moiraine, Rand, Nynaeve, Egwene, Lanfear? What happens? Welp, here we go

Farewell astronomical summer. Tell your friend meteorological summer they are welcome to stay around

Been using the same starter word for about 3 years. Time for another Wordle 1,553 1/6* 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

It’s been a week since I finished this. My body finally feels recovered. I still get goosebumps thinking about the moments before the finish line. Looking forward to the next adventure

Love it or hate it, Python is one of the most popular languages. I started using it in 2005 when my boss told me about it. Hard to believe how far it has come Check out the Python documentary youtu.be/GfH4QL4VqJ0?...

I’m 7 months into a project using @htmx.org. What I didn’t expect was the team discussions to sound like we are creating an API, but the content type is html

Back home after an unforgettable week at the final TransRockies Run

wtf wordle?!

Haven’t run in two weeks because of an injury. Is this what it feels like to be full? Appetite is way down with less activity. Not sure I like this

Is the corn knee high? 🌽🇺🇸