People say, “I am vibe-coding. Therefore, I am a software engineer.” This is like saying, “I can ride a bike, so I can drive a car.” Both have wheels. Both can move forward, right? Here’s what I’ll say: try merging onto a highway on a bicycle. You’ll learn fast what’s missing. Mapping the Territory Today I want to place vibe-coding, coding, regular coding, and software engineering onto the same map. So you’ll know when to pedal and when to drive. ...
At the heart of both philosophy and computer science lies a single, crucial question: How do we build a model of the world? Plato and Aristotle approached this question from completely opposite directions, and their answers map almost perfectly onto modern programming and machine learning approaches. Plato’s Perfect Forms in Your Code Plato believed everything we see is an imperfect copy of a perfect, unchanging form. Take a circle you draw on paper, according to Plato, it’s just an imperfect representation of a perfect circle that exists as an abstract form, with exact mathematical properties no physical circle can fully achieve. ...
Most developers ask AI tools to write a function or fix a bug. That’s fine, but here’s the cheat code I discovered: treat AI like a developer on your team. When I do that, everything changes. The Pattern I Discovered I use AI tools every day in my professional work and personal projects. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini; I subscribe to all of them. Over time, I’ve noticed a pattern. These tools excel at zooming in. By that, I mean they’re excellent at specific tasks: generating code, writing tests, refactoring functions, etc… . We all know this. ...
Have you ever joined a new team with a new tech stack, with a new process, and a production issue already waiting for you? Here is how I ramp up fast: I zoom out before I zoom in. The Problem: Everyone Hunts Where They’re Comfortable During my consultant gigs, I am constantly dropped into an unfamiliar environment. New teams, new architecture, new tech stack, new development process, new deployment process, it’s always new. The question is always the same: how do you stay on top of it? ...
OpenAI recently released the GPT-5 family, introducing three distinct options for Pro users: GPT-5 Fast, GPT-5 Thinking, and GPT-5 Pro. While it’s common knowledge that GPT-5 Fast handles simple tasks and GPT-5 Pro tackles complex ones, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear to many users. This post provides a concise explanation of how each variant operates and when to use them effectively. GPT-5 Fast For the context of this article, we will use GPT-5 Fast as our base model, think of it as a black box optimized for speed, good old LLM. When you submit a query, it processes the request and delivers an answer quickly without extensive deliberation. ...
We keep hearing this: “AGI is coming.” But what exactly is AGI? Let’s explore this critical question. Three Different Lenses Let’s look at AI through three different lenses. The Economics Lens OpenAI defines AGI as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” Their focus is entirely economic—it’s about jobs and economic productivity. When framed this way, the definition essentially states: if AI surpasses humans at most work that people are paid to perform, then we have achieved AGI. The moment AI can produce the majority of economically valuable work, we’ve crossed the AGI threshold. ...
“So, what kind of engineer are you?” “I’m a Python engineer.” Every time I hear this, I cringe a little. Not because Python isn’t amazing—it absolutely is. But because somewhere along the way, we’ve started defining ourselves by our tools instead of our craft. I’m sure you’ve heard it too: “I am an AWS engineer,” “I am a React developer,” as if the tool has become their entire professional identity. ...
There’s a really weird communication pattern that I keep seeing all the time in big companies and small companies. Picture this: You’re hiring an employee, consultant, contractor, whatever you want to call them. You think this person has good experience and you’re paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once you hire them, you tell them, “Hey, I want you to do this.” This is super weird. You’re not explaining the problem. You’re just trying to use this person as a human tool. ...
I want to argue that you should build your product on microservices; not because of technical reasons, but because you should see it as a team management strategy. The Double-Edged Sword of Microservices Let’s zoom out and first remember what a microservice is. A microservice is basically a small, deployable piece of service that, when meshed together with others, forms a larger application. If you’re already working with microservices or even if you haven’t built any so far, you’ve probably heard about it. ...
Have you ever been in a meeting where people just keep putting band-aids on problems but don’t discuss how they came to that point? Let me talk about the decision chain mindset. Understanding the Decision Chain Picture this: You make a decision, or someone makes a decision at a high level. Let’s call this Decision A. Based on this decision, another decision is made. Let’s name it Decision B. And based on that, now you have to make another decision. Let’s call it Decision C. ...