Writing on AI-assisted development, engineering leadership, systems thinking, and the messy human reality between them.https://i.usedtocode.com/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/28/2025-recap-the-year-i-didnt-give-a-damn-about-people/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/28/2025-recap-the-year-i-didnt-give-a-damn-about-people/Even though I never considered myself a great programmer, I always loved to code.Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/20/2025-recap-from-barely-walking-to-training-three-times-a-week/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/20/2025-recap-from-barely-walking-to-training-three-times-a-week/Early in this bumpy Sabbatical Year, on top of being diagnosed with Sleep Apnea, I was diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis, which I only recently managed to overcome after a year of physical therapy, shockwave therapy, dry needling, and more physical therapy.Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/16/2025-recap-my-life-with-sleep-apnea/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/12/16/2025-recap-my-life-with-sleep-apnea/At the start of 2025 I began a sabbatical after six years at full throttle in a startup.Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/26/backpressure-rejecting-negative-hallucinations/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/26/backpressure-rejecting-negative-hallucinations/In this fifth and final installment of the “Fundamental Principles for Using Programming Assistants” series we are going to make peace with — even embrace — the fact that no matter how many instructions and examples (steering) we hand an LLM, there is no way to keep it from generating code that is no good, that is: negative hallucinations.Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/13/all-prompting-is-prompt-injection/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/13/all-prompting-is-prompt-injection/There is no such thing as “Prompt Injection” as an attack mechanism, nor as a vulnerability.Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/06/steering-favoring-positive-hallucinations/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/06/steering-favoring-positive-hallucinations/This fourth installment of the “Fundamental Principles for Using Programming Assistants” series focuses on “steering”, the term I will use here to refer to the practices that let a Programming Assistant consistently favor the production of positive hallucinations — hallucinations that deliver value to developers and to the users of our application.Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/03/a-systems-view-of-ai-assisted-programming/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/11/03/a-systems-view-of-ai-assisted-programming/In the first article of this series we concluded that hallucinations are the fundamental feature of the LLMs on which Programming Assistants like Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, etc. are built, and that these hallucinations can be positive or negative depending on whether they add value to our code or not.Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/28/the-mathematics-of-ai-assisted-code/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/28/the-mathematics-of-ai-assisted-code/From our first article in the series, Hallucination is the Fundamental Feature of LLMs, we have that LLM hallucinations can be positive or negative depending on whether they add or subtract value from our work, from “our code”.Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/20/hallucination-is-the-fundamental-feature-of-llms/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/20/hallucination-is-the-fundamental-feature-of-llms/An LLM cannot not hallucinate because in essence that is how it works: hallucinating that next word (tokens), producing a plausible text (image, audio, etc.) that may have no grounding in reality.Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/18/Using-a-Github-Page-with-your-own-Domain-to-publish-you-Obsidian-vault-through-Quartz-for-free/https://i.usedtocode.com/2025/10/18/Using-a-Github-Page-with-your-own-Domain-to-publish-you-Obsidian-vault-through-Quartz-for-free/This is a detailed step-by-step tutorial that will allow you to set up Quartz to publish a folder of your vault as a website for free in Github Pages, is mostly a reminder for myself, I hope that it may be useful for you.Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT