work

If AI optimizes my work, do we need fewer programmers? I offer the alternative: the scope of software just keeps growing. Before compilers the largest programs were tiny; now AAA games take hundreds of engineers years. The bar keeps rising.

I've been programming since the early 1990s on a hand-me-down Mac Plus. The AI tooling improves at breakneck speed, but the actual programming ability has leveled off, and it will lead you down the wrong path with supreme confidence. A field report from building a streaming app.

Rendering a map always starts out fun and easy, and then suddenly I'm reading about the Visvalingam-Whyatt simplification algorithm. The rub: simplify each state's polygon for a better frame rate and the borders stop lining up with their neighbors.