ScottW/rites

Troubleshooting Broken Software Tools Still Sucks

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:12:33 -0500

20+ years of professionally building software, and here is how my last hour or so went.

heroku login -> zsh: killed heroku login

hmmm…why did ZSH kill Heroku? It turns out it is just reporting what happened.

Open the crash reports and get a bunch of text I barely understand.

I remember that I have a second brain that knows what this crap means. ChatGPT, can you help me?

It does a decent job of educating me on what the reports (segfault on the main thread implies not even the hand of God can save this process).

When in doubt, just re-install.

No dice.

Google shows me others with similar problems, but none related to Heroku, and nothing that looks promising.

I wonder what the (brew) Doctor thinks about this (Heroku was installed this way).

The doctor takes her good old time getting back to me on this older Mac. But when she does respond, she says, “Dawg, your shit is F’ed Up!”

I am paraphrasing, but there are unlinked things, kegs with no formula,, dry taps, an unbrewed dylibs, and likely most importantly, this:

This is weird because I had previously checked for an update after an OS update, and I had tried to re-install the tools just to be safe.

In both cases, it said, “there are no updates, go away”.

Anywho, I run the following:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

sudo xcode-select --install

Eventually, notice the popup window (because why install them from the terminal), click OK to continue, and 10 minutes or so later, we are back in business.

The key takeaways:

This shit isn’t hard, it just takes patience.
Even those who have done it for a long time still get stuck.
There is nothing wrong with yelling profanities at a computer from the comfort of your basement.

Finding Joy in Fitness: The Importance of Enjoying Your Training

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 09:40:30 -0500

Last week’s early morning gym commutes were far from ideal. One morning, I attempted to leave and discovered I had a dead battery (actually, two dead batteries). Two days later, I had a close encounter with a deer while driving. Temperatures were in the low 30s at best.

However, at approximately 4:35 am on a Monday (today), I found myself not only commuting to the gym again but also feeling quite excited to get to work. It struck me then that it all comes down to finding the type of training you genuinely enjoy. While there may be exercises considered “the best” or “better,” even engaging in the most mediocre exercise is far better for you than doing nothing.

This wasn’t always the case for me. It took some trial and error, along with the willingness to start something, fully commit to it, and then be open to finding something that I both enjoyed and that yielded better results.

Ultimately, what truly matters is taking that initial step and sticking with it. It is crucial to listen to your body and determine what it will take to enjoy the work.

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 09:38:49 -0500

SQLite on Rails: Introducing litestream-ruby

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 10:36:05 -0500

Charlie Munge:

The world isn’t driven by greed. It’s driven by envy.

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:48:26 -0500

Ruby Enumerable#any?

At first glance, this is not what I was expecting:

[false, false, false].any? => false

But a quick glance at the docs:

The method returns true if the block ever returns a value other than false or nil

This can be handy for doing a bunch of small tests and detecting if anything passed.

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:03:23 -0500

AI Code Review via MetaBob

Looks interesting. I will definitely try it out once they support Ruby.

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:01:24 -0500

Who’s Harry Potter? Making LLMs forget

What do we do if we realize that some of our training data needs to be removed after the LLM has already been trained?

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:31:53 -0500

In a similar vein to the Bill Gurley’s video, Malcom Gladwell had a recent podcast highlighting the misinformation in bills that would ban AR-15’s.

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:27:20 -0500

A truly fantastic talk by Bill Gurley on the regulatory landscape and the influence of special interests - 2,851 Miles

Suggestions For Not Forgetting To Remove Unused Code

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:38:36 -0500

I am working on a significant update/rewrite of part of KickoffLabs. I had a task to work through what we do in a Sidekiq worker. It was late on Friday when I got to this part of the code, and I decided to punt on it until Monday.

Monday morning, I grab a cup of coffee and sit down to finish this section off and see a comment I missed (and had missed for a long time).

Outside the screenshot, there is an if statement, ensuring this code was not executed in the last four years. Still, it was frustrating that we had missed removing it for so long.

I figured ChatGPT would have a good solution to stay on top of this, but it mostly just tried to explain to me how to use comments. :)

Next up, I asked on Twitter (and Ruby.Social):

Any suggestions (other than search) to ensure code like this gets cleaned up?

From there, I got a lot of good suggestions.

Two Ruby gems looked interesting:

If I had to choose, I would go with todo_or_die since it would cause a failure/notification locally. I would rather not wait until there was a pull request/etc.

The rest of the suggestions included if statements and date checks. My favorite, and the one I will likely adopt going forward, is to wrap it in a test that fails after a specific date.

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:46:27 -0500

A nice demo of making an Alpine.js component.

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 08:08:10 -0500

Interesting break down of what people actually use ChatGPT for.

The last couple of days I have been working with TSRanges in PostgreSQL and it ChatGPT has made it extremely productive.

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:40:32 -0500

Nice walk through going from a Turbo Frame to Turbo Stream

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:10:51 -0500

Fear is our true enemy

At the root of most fear is what other people will think of us. It’s paralyzing. It’s skewing. It distorts the very fabric of our reality – makes us behave in such utterly insane and cowardly ways that it’s hard to even describe.

- via Ryan Holiday in Courage is Calling

The older I get, the more I see this every day. Science says we only use about 10% of brains. But that is not what holds us back. We hold ourselves back because we are afraid of looking like a failure.

From Minutes to Seconds

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 13:34:41 -0500

I am tired of guessing the future of AI. What I am sure of, something routine like this used to take significantly longer than it does today.

In the past:

Google a bit; maybe find someone asking a similar question somewhere (hopefully, do not get distracted by something else).
Goto the docs (which often took Google to find)
Try and find something related to what you were doing.
(Sometimes) Apply what you learn in step #3 to your problem.

Now, we are back to a quick search, which is kind of like Google in the old days.

The Fall of the 10X Developer

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 10:08:22 -0500

This piece by Justin Searls has been making the rounds for a week or so.

The Fall of the 10X Developer

My quick take: AI is leveling the developer playing field a bit. You still need to ask it proper questions to get good results. We have known for quite a while that colleges do not prepare you to be a good developer in the real world. AI won’t solve the preparation problem, but it will likely make new hires much more effective sooner.

Still, like any other career, if you just mail it in, you will not truly grow.

We must remember that today’s AI is much more pattern recognition than thinking. Maybe that will change, but for now, I still believe it is more assistive for most use cases than a replacement.

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 15:51:46 -0500

Corsair Acquires Drop

Today, I have the honor of sharing with you yet another step in our evolution. Drop has been acquired by Corsair.

They say the brand will continue, but unfortunately, its value has been ruined over the last couple of years.

I have had mostly good experiences with Drop, and I thought adding a desk accessory category recently was an intelligent move.

My guess is Drop disappears in less than two years.

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:20:24 -0500

Do you see RuboCop offenses after installing and configuring the Standard VS Code Extension?

To fix this issue, you need to disable RubyLSP’s diagnostics:

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rubyLsp.enabledFeatures": {
    "diagnostics": false
}

Hat Tip

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:02:50 -0500

This is likely the best post gem install message I have seen (well, next to HTTParty). Well done Stanard team.

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 09:51:18 -0500

Finished reading: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers 📚

A fantastic quick read that puts you in the right mindset to start a new business. I cannot recommend this book enough to any (current or future) entrepreneurs.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 08:37:44 -0500

My biggest wish list item for my Peloton is starting to come true.

You can now stream shows during a ride.

YouTube.tv is a good start. Hoping we will see others (Netflix) shortly.

Steamed Vegetables

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 10:04:44 -0500

I mentioned yesterday that I enjoyed the Starrett’s chapter on eating in Built to Move. I have been on a high protein kick for a while but was not always getting the 800g recommendation from the book.

I changed that with a set of microwave bowls (I already owned) called AnyDay (see CookAnyDay.com). I am sure there are other similar products out there, so search around (avoid plastic ones), but I enjoy these (do not buy the small ones, the size is not practical).

What I like about them is you can throw just about any vegetables in them and have them steamed in just a couple of minutes. I start most days with about 200-300g of broccoli and cauliflower.

I had seen them recommended by Chef David Chang. I am unsure if he is an investor or a fan (my guess is he is getting paid), but they are beneficial either way. He mentions cooking meat and fish in them, but I have yet to go that far. However, they do an excellent job of reheating almost anything and make for some easy rice and oatmeal dishes.

No referral/affilate here. I am only mentioning them as a recommendation to help you get some more vegetables in your diet quickly. 😁

Book: Built to Move

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 12:50:01 -0500

Finished reading: Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett 📚

While the Starretts are known for movement and mobility, the chapters on breathing and eating are the two that stuck with me for weeks after finishing it.

Overall the book is filled with many great tips with no gimmicks, supplements, or additional purchases needed.

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 09:18:40 -0500

Cookie Policy Generator

I am not sure what’s worse. The fact this exists or that some might find it helpful….I know the answer….

The AI-powered cookie policy generator. Enter the url of your website to automatically detect which cookies you need

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:51:14 -0500

GPT-Migrate

If you’ve ever faced the pain of migrating a codebase to a new framework or language, this project is for you.

We have a bunch of CoffeeScript that I would love to migrate. It is hard to justify the time because it works, but with the improvements made to modern JavaScript, I cannot imagine purposely writing more CoffeeScript at this point.