Sony-TV-Control: the battery in the RC is started to discharge, so I've downloaded Android apps, which can control our Sony smart TV. Tried some, but I was disappointed, so asked DeepSeek if Sony TVs have some API. Instead of demonstrating the API, DeepSeek created me a simple RC PoC, which looked promising, so I decided to continue vibe-coding my version, a mobile-first webapp with Python backend: https://github.com/ern0/sony-tv-control
It has several functions which a normal RC can't have, e.g. search channel by name, or hide "ABCD" channel, if it has "ABCD HD" pair, to make channel list shorter.
Timelapse-consolidator: create a single timelapse video from multiple captures, ignoring night shots. I think, it's a good example for splitting the task for separate programs, which task size the AI still can handle. See prompt for details: https://github.com/ern0/timelapse-consolidator
(Night shot detector should be faster, instead Python, I would rewrite it in some native language, like Rust, but it will run once per project, so it's not vital.)
Photo Organizer - Organizes image and video files first by original directory name, then by EXIF date, if any. Renames images to img-yyyymmdd-hhmmss format and moves them to yyyymmdd directories. I've planned such for a decade, but I was too lazy to spend a week or two with it (I mean some evenings, ca. a week). Vibecoded in ca. two days: https://github.com/ern0/photo-organizer
Programming With AI: Forget "We Have Always Done It This Way", Enter "The Corpus Was Biased Towards This Way" (Case Study)
The term "prompt engineering" sounded like bullshit at first, but this study confirmed my suspicion that I was wrong. Programmers' jobs will not be taken away by retrained insurance agents.
"I was curious whether popular large language models can implement a simple audio effect in Python, and if yes, then how do they balance computational cost and audio quality, and how do their solutions compare to my handcrafted, non-AI-aided version."
On Amiga, there was a 3D demo with this trick. You can "jump in" your eyes to the proper position if you hold your finger at the place where the 3d image should appear, ca. 10 cm close to your eyes, and focus on it. You'll be cross-eyed without knowing it.
Also, I was using the trick as a "cheat" when I played Tiny Lands on Nintendo Switch, it's a "spot the difference" game, but with 3d landscapes (you can rotate and zoom): https://www.dekudeals.com/items/tiny-lands
1. A friend of mine told me that he was writing a program, then he needed a function, which he just wrote. At compilation, turned out that the same funcion already exists with the same name. He created it a hour before.
2. I remember all my variable names. In a module. For a while.
I've written a bouncing color bar for Amiga, which was running without the processor.
Amiga computers have
- a main processor (MC68000 or higher),
- a bit blitter, which can perform memory various operations in memory (using 3x source and 1x target, it can AND, OR etc. them),
- and a Copper, which have own "program", it can interpret 2 type of instructions: WAIT for a scanline position (4-pixel precision), and COPY value to a specified regsiter.
It was the name, which made me think: "Copper" is coming from "coprocessor". Well, it can run WAIT and COPY instructions, but the program's time-scope is somewhat restricted, the program is running every screen refresh cycle only once. Is it possible to write a program for Copper, which is doing some more, like animation?
I've generated several color bar frames for Copper, which adds up as a bouncing bar, and as the last instructions, I've added a COPY instruction, which sets the address of the Copper List to the next frame (the last one pointed to first frame).
So, it worked, the bar was bouncing without any support from the processor (besides initial generation and setting of the Copper List address first time).
Blitter and audio DMA is fantastic, it's a big help that the processor just puts an order to a hardware and it executes, but Copper is a degree more bigger magic, it can make things autonomously, which I was demonstrated.
I can't prove it, because I don't have data: my GitHub page is useful.
My CV is two pages long, and it's still too long, recruiters don't read it, probably just look at the keywords or IDK how they work. Previous version was 17 pages long, it was a bad conception (just listed projects, etc., as described in the book, of 30+ years).
But if you look at my GitHub page, you can get a far better picture. I only have my own repos, so you get a relatively good idea of what I do, how I work (most of my projects have documentation, tests), what quality code I write, even if the picture is a bit biased, because of some non-public and of course work projects are not included.
I imagined how should I act when I forgetting the SQL table create command in an interview.
1. I admit I am nervous so much that I just couldn't tell my own name.
2. It's just strange for first look that I don't remember, but we create tables so rarely, that it's not a surprise.
3. Okay, let's try to figure out the command, my first hint is that it should be "new", "create" or something. Let's recall, how to deal other way, say, delete or modify tables: "drop table", "alter table" - so my best hint is "create table" or "new table". (Offensive notice: if you learnt SQL one day before the interview, this gonna not work.)
Great, go on, it's pretty sure it should contain the list of fields, define them: names, types, and some constraints, whether it can be empty etc. Maybe this command defines the indexes as well, then every index should declare one or more fields, ascending/descending marks per field. Oh, a table unique key is also can be specified, at the field specification. Finally I notice, that different SQL servers may have different syntax and even features, like choosing storage system for the table (MySQL: InnoDB etc.).
That's the _content_ of the SQL's create table command, withot any syntax. I think, it's clear, that I would have no problem with writing a table creating SQL statement.
If you can not solve the "I-forget-the-syntax" problem, probably (another offensive statement, sorry) you're not for this job. In real life, you will have even more stressful situations, and you have to solve them, or at least DO SOMETHING. What you've done was NOTHING.
It has several functions which a normal RC can't have, e.g. search channel by name, or hide "ABCD" channel, if it has "ABCD HD" pair, to make channel list shorter.
reply