Challenging Assumptions for Better Software
Software development is a lonely quiet art where souls can easily be crushed into despair. Other hand, it’s also a place where an individual, or team, can rise to levels of triumph and creation that can feel earth changing at times.
As a largely solo developer, I find myself zeroing in on challenges that really don’t warrant the attention that I give them, but I just can’t let them go. Case in point, I’ve been playing with SVG parsing for the past couple of years because I’ve chosen this format as the best way to represent vector graphics in the apps that I develop.
Two Years with a GPT
My first experience with a “GPT” was copilot, integrated into Visual Studio Code. I was working inside Microsoft, and the dates seem fuzzy now, but it’s been roughly two years. What is a “GPT” anyway? Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It says what it is right on the box. Well, at least in nerd speak. Let’s break it down though, because it’s instructive as to the state of “AI” at the moment.
A View from The Other Side
Well, it’s been a minute, as they say.
I would say that my family’s current epoch started about a year ago, around the time I purchased the Apple Vision Pro visual computing device (VR goggles…). I was recounting the last year in an email, and it was a real feature length movie of activities. The center wasn’t necessarily around technology, but there sure was a lot of it.
Back in Feb. of 2024, I purchased my AVP. Once summer hit, we ended up heading to Denver Colorado to meet up with Stewart Tucker Lundy. Stewart is an irascible quadriplegic who was doing quite fine in the world before I ever met him. We put the AVP on his head, and in his view, it’s as if a who new world opened up for him. I mean, VR goggles are great for watching movies on a giant screen 1 inch from your eyes, but when you have a tool such as this, that’s really great at eye tracking, has low latency, and gives your hours of comfort, it can actually change your view of the world, and how you can interact in it.
Digitizing Treasures
So, everything is supposed to be in “the cloud” already, right? I mean, how many times have I already backed up my DVD collection, and tossed away the physical discs? I mean, you need those physical discs in case you’re ever raided and need to prove you’ve actually purchased those hundreds of movies, and not just downloaded them from the internet right?
Moving to India, and Re-Treasuring
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but the family is going to be moving to India for a while. It met my wife in India, we got married, and soon enough moved to the US, because that was my job base. That was back in 2008. Now we’re in 2025, I’ve retired from MSFT, and it’s time to go back and be interactive with that side of the family.
There is sure to be a lot of adventure ahead, with trials, tribulations, triumphs and rewards. The only thing for certain, is that we’re not certain how it will turn out, but we’re up for the challenges, so here we go.
On the Eve of a New Year
Here it is, the last day of 2024. Of course, when a year turns over is a pretty arbitrary thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but I take a pause anyway, because the rest of the planet does. Some years back, I learned the technique of making New Year’s Commitments, rather than Resolutions. The different being, resolutions are typically ditched after the first or second week of the year. One workout at the gym, and that’s it. One run, one turn on the new treadmill. You’ve just got higher priorities… A Commitment, on the other hand, carries the weight of something you can’t escape just after the first try. You’re committed, it has priority, you’re not going to let something else muscle it out.
Go Roughly Into That Good Light
What’s the difference between “software hacking” and “computer science”? I’d like to think that the more ‘science’ oriented part of writing code has to do with formal methods, algorithmic purity, and systems theories and whatnot. A lot more specification, a lot more academic, a lot less code. Then there’s how we generate 99% of the code that actually gets used on a daily basis. If we’re the creators of core systems, OS kernels, UI libraries, and the like, there might be more ‘science’ involved.
Tequity Podcast on Spotify!!
Even before I left Microsoft at the end of 2022, I was making appearances on podcasts, telling my story, preaching the Tequity message. Over this past year, we made plans to create our own podcast, to control the narrative, find our own guests, and tell our own story.
Well, with a few fits and starts in terms of learning how to record, edit, and post, we’ve finally produced our premier episode of the Tequity podcast, and it can be found on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qmwtXIfjluESiRfabYmke