Week #42

It has been a nasty week, both physically and emotionally. I am sick right now, still somehow finding the right amount of energy to pump this edition out. I have a sore throat and fever. Twitchy eyes in the cold make things worse.

But emotionally, I have been on the battlefield, it seems. The battle has started between my heart and mind. The one that cares about the craft, my soul, and the other about the ego, duties and responsibilities, fame, the thing that I am right now. It’s intense, I am barely able to breathe and think. It’s making me doubt myself, my decisions, my efforts, and my existence.

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The war is not about winning, it is about fighting; even if I were to lose, I would be happy I fought. I didn't give up, but the opponent was a bit more powerful. There will be a revenge if I loose of course, but that is the worst case scenario.

Back to tech, I have been working on VLLMs, i.e., using Visual inputs to LLMs to get things out from it. Usually for extraction, summarizing, etc. And it was not that exciting, because I feel awkward working with LLMs these days. Especially to write code, not the process of integrating, I love that, but I am kind of forced to use LLMs in doing anything at work. Kind of feels like lavish luxury to some people, but for me, it’s a curse, a way to dig your own grave. People don't realize that LLMs are making humans dumb; they are making you think less, and do tab-tab auto-complete. Not saying it’s bad, but using it all the time makes me feel empty inside.

Ah! What a time to be a junior developer. What a worse way to start your career. A bump straight away. No time to think, no time to reflect.

I think this can't be a worse time to be a software developer, at least for the one who care about the art and craft of building software. They can still find joy, but can't hold the responsibilities.

Quote of the week

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
— Carl Jung

Yes, this is tough. I might speak a bit repetitively about these things, but this is important to get it out. AI is no longer a small hype like the Web-3 boom of 2022, the COVID pandemic lasting 2 years, it is more than that now. Chat GPT was launched in December of 2022, almost 2 years after its arrival, it has taken humans by storm.

Being able to replace your craft and art that your soul craves and loves with a machine is jarring and draining. As if there is no purpose left for humans. Yes, the quote is rightly placed for this time, at least for me. I don’t know how a developer cannot even feel a little scared after all of this. Hopefully, we will have some positive directions soon.

Read

  • The hidden cost of AI coding
    • With AI and Agentic AI, we as developers are going to get very few flow state sessions. Since we will not be writing any code, we will be just guiding like a pilot, and the actual craft is up to LLM to do, which is scary and takes the fun out of the art.
    • I am really upset and feeling empty after realising this. Also, there have been discussions around me where the takeover of AI by developers was around the corner. Not even that, I am not scared of that, but the part right now, where companies and top-level managers, or whatever they are called, are forcing developers to use LLMs. They say, Why use horse carts when we have flying jets. As if decades old tradition of writing software was wiped out in months.
    • Really, it feels sad to be living in this revolution. It’s exciting at some point, agreed. But the more I use it, the more I fear.
    • I really don’t feel that there will be such periods created for developers by most companies, since they only see money as output.
  • I just want to code
    • I honestly feel this way, the war between your heart and mind.
    • What a coincidence, I am on a war, turns out, everyone is too. Everyone is fighting the control of the mind over the heart, the ego over the soul.
    • The author of this post has really put it well, just read that post, instead of this rambling.
  • What will coding look like in 2027
    • This looks like an AI-slop at first, but then it kind of makes sense
    • We are now abstracting away the core thing to AI (its pissing me off)
  • A critical look at MCP
    • This is a great post, detailing out the actual protocol to see why it is there in place, which is a great question to have and get an answer to.
  • MCP: A protocol to watch
    • I also get what MCP is for, I actually created the tool-calling extension for Meta AI’s API, which was a chat interface only. I saw the pain points and really found the need to standardizing the way we create, pass, and retrieve functions to LLMs.
    • MCP is the protocol to do that, not just function/tool calling, it is also important for tool-specific context passing.
    • But yes, the concrete ways to use this haven’t clicked with me yet. I have a few ideas, but not finding the motivation enough to build it end-to-end.

Watched

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  • MCP vs API
    • The MCP explanation part was clear and great

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Learnt

  • Passing images to LLMs for getting data out
  • System design and overall architecture knowledge are far more important than details in today's AI-focused world
    • In today’s AI-driven world, system design and architectural thinking are becoming more valuable than deep knowledge of any single language or framework.
    • Companies increasingly care about how well you can orchestrate large models and systems, not just how well you can code. We live in strange times.
    • The traditional craft of programming is evolving, sometimes at the cost of depth and intentionality. AI was meant to help us with chores and the mundane, but we’ve turned it into something else entirely.
    • Maybe this is a turning point. If we don’t reflect now, the direction we take might be hard to reverse later.

Tech News

We surely will have a new Anthropic model drop next week, that's what the rumors says.

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That’s it from this 42nd edition of my weekly learning. I hope you enjoyed it, and leave comments on what you think about some of my takes or any feedback.

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