harper

this was a fun project and has been super effective for helping me get shit done (or whatever is work these days). if helpful, here is the claude skill we made for this: https://github.com/2389-research/summarize-meetings

Surprised no mention of futel

nice name!

It was not a strong metaphor! Can't win them all.

You are correct tho. I do think that we are approaching the point of "If it compiles, ship it"

the prompts are generated from the planning steps. If you were to follow the prompts in the planning phase, you would get output that is clearly the "starting prompt"

that is the first thing you send to aider.

also - there was a joke below, but you can do --yes-always and it will not ask for confirmation. I find it does a pretty good job.

Yea - i have had OK luck with the architect mode. but was using that as part of this (using deepseek for reasoning) and it good. but oh so slow.

Ultimately, i would love to just use one tool

in my experience, there is quite a spectrum of legacy code.

Legacy modern code would be anything from the last 5-10 years. Vintage Pioneer code (which i have both initialized, and maintained) is more than 20 years old.

I am trying not to be a vintage pioneer these days.

the speed is way faster. I am a good programmer with more than 25 years of professional experience. The AI is a better programmer in every way. Why do it myself when i can outsource it and play cookie clicker?

The real thing that sold me is the entire workflow takes 10 minutes to plan, and then 10-15 minutes to execute (let's say a python script of medium complexity). after a solid ~20-30 min I am largely done. no debugging necessary.

it would have taken me an hour or two to do the same script.

this means i can spend a lot more time with the fam, hacking on more things, and messing about.

I actually think it is going to be way worse than you are suggesting. I think that the LLM codegen is going to replace most if not all of software eng workflow and teams that we see today.

Software is going to be prompt wrangling with some acceptance testing. Then just prompt wrangling.

I don't have a lot of hope for the software profession to survive.

fixed! thanks

i really wanted to use DSPy to generate prompts, but it wasn't quite as compatible with my workflow as i wanted. I love the idea tho - code instead of strings.

i will dig in again. It is an exciting idea.

when it first was released i played with it - but haven't since. i should try again.

I added it because of the apple prompts! I figured it is worth a try. The results are good, but i did not test it extensively

let me know how it works!

most of this is aider / codegen:

Total tokens in: 26,729,994 Total tokens out: 1,553,284

Last month anthropic bill was $89.30

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I want to program with a team, together. not a group of people individually coding with an agent, and then managing merges. I have been playing a lot with merging team context - but haven't gotten too far yet.

I will never part with my expensive kindle. Lolol. I read so many good books on it.

Nope. I would love to make something public using this tech. It is so magical.

Rarely. They are mostly bust fucking around. I will try to document the current one more.

Fwiw, my recent blog is me trying to do this more

this shouldn't be too hard

would love to check it out

i thought this far too late

I also run visionect locally to power a couple of displays around the house. When I recently went to go buy a few more - it was clear that they require a subscription. I emailed them and they confirmed that they now require a subscription.

It’s a bummer because I don’t think there are as good quality displays to replace visionect with, but the subscription was far too much.

I have 4 memories that keep sticking out about bob. I shared them on twitter - but I will share them here with a bit more color. They are a bit different cuz they are not really engineering related, but will give you some idea of his character and how he interacted with folks:

1) when I was CTO of the Obama Campaign I was scared and lost. bob helped me so much. helped me be a better CTO. helped me sell a lot of weird shit to people who didn't want to buy (i.e. tech). and helped us use square. it was always so much fun. He was a very strong guiding force.

Once, when he came to chicago to help with the square integration for OFA, we all went out clubbing and it go so crazy. (I think) he lost his laptop. randy reddig and him both lost a bunch of their stuff. I remember he stayed out all night partying with people who he didn't know. I still have DJ friends who mention "whatever happened to that square guy who was so much fun. "

towards the end of the campaign he schooled me on how to run a better interview program. helped me design the interview strategy we had at modest (which I am really proud of). he reminded me that you can be ethical, gracious and flexible - and still hire great people. no need to be a dick. be positive

2) my friend Derek broox and I went clubbing in the early 2000s. we went to a metallica show with vivid entertainment (wild times) and Derek took this photo of the metallica show. for some reason we uploaded the photos to my flickr account. metallica found the photo and used it in their death magnetic album cover. they credited me and not Derek. (More details here - https://derek.broox.com/blog/do-i-sue-metallica-or-do-i-sue-...)

anyway. Years and years pass and Metallica is like "whoops" and invites both of us to see Metallica at this super small venue in Iowa. I told bob about it and he introduced me to Lars. Lol. Of course bob knows Lars and is just going to introduce me.

3) last week bob calls me at 7am chicago time. I am in bed. he calls me on FaceTime like a mad person. no heads up. just facetimes me. lol.

He was hanging out with Lee Foss and wanted to make sure we connected (lee is from chicago and we have a lot of mutuals). Bob was like "you guys are both awesome!"

4)

One time in the 2010s we were going to some benefit party at a club in SF. We show up and the door guy told us that it was going to be 25 bucks to get it. Or 5 bucks but we had to ditch our clothes and be in our underwear. Bob and I immediately choose the 5 dollars option without saying anything. Just immediately took off our pants. It just made sense. It was a great party and really fun.

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Bob was a tremendous mentor to me. He helped me when I was a baby cto (at the Obama campaign lol) and helped me when I was a baby ceo. He was one of the bright stars out there who helped make sure the world was better. I am pretty cynical about technology and our industry - bob was an exception. Without bob, I wouldn't be who I am today. The best part is that I know dozens of people who would say the same thing. His impact is wide and weird.

I wouldn't say I know his values, but I watched his actions: - he was always generous with his time, and his connections - he was always up for an adventure - and even when we had no pants on in a club, he was giving me advice on how to make sure my company was more successful, make sure my teams were properly fed, and make sure I was taking care of myself

I am going to miss that guy

Teddy helped me get modest.com back from paypal after our acquisition for about 10% of their original asking price.

can also vouch for Teddy. super helpful for getting modest.com back from pypl