DEV Community: AnotherCastaway

Embarrassing old projects.

AnotherCastaway — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 14:06:43 +0000

I am pretty sure most developers probably have had some old projects that they are simply embarrassed of. A few months ago, I made a simple ML API for Java. I thought it was awesome. Looking back, it sucked. It was 50% AI-written, all in one file (the horror) and was mostly broken. I am not sure why I left it on GitHub publicly. However, there is a very simple way you can turn this embarrassment into something to cherish. Don't think of how bad the project was, think of how much you improved since then. One of the best ways of comparing yourself is by making a predecessor to that project you thought was bad. For example, that ML API I mentioned really was bad, so I made a second one. Just looking back, I honestly feel really cool knowing how much I changed. At the moment of writing, the project has not been finished yet, but it is public. Anyways, comment some projects that you were embarrassed of!

CastawayMakesThings / LyraNeural2

The new and (extremely) improved Lyra!

LyraNeural 2

A lightweight neural network library for Java focused on simplicity, readable APIs, and fast iteration.

Project status: Active development
Minimum Java: 21
Build tool: Maven

About LyraNeural 2

LyraNeural 2 is a lightweight neural network library for Java, designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind. It provides a flexible architecture for creating, training, and deploying neural networks with features including:

Features

Simple and intuitive model building using a builder pattern
Support for multiple activation functions (ReLU, Leaky ReLU, TanH)
Efficient model serialization and loading
Parallel processing for improved training performance
Selectable training execution mode: CPU single-thread, CPU multi-thread (default), GPU (Aparapi-accelerated forward pass)
Built-in data type conversion handling
Customizable network architectures

Perfect for those looking to implement neural networks in Java without the complexity of larger…

View on GitHub

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Spring is hard.

AnotherCastaway — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 09:46:04 +0000

Java is really such an underrated language, and if used to it's full potential, can be used for so much more. One of the things that makes it so useful is the awesome library known as Spring. I have been learning it for a few days, and I can tell you that this is not going to be very easy.If anybody else is learning, let's learn together (Discord: AnotherCastaway)! And if you arent learning it and you know Java, then learn it!

I just made my first public API in Java. Any thoughts?

AnotherCastaway — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 08:45:23 +0000

Yeah, I made an API. It is a simple machine learning API that lets you train, use, save, and load basic models. I just made it, so it could be very broken. I am also just a beginner, so you can expect some bugs and ugly code. Anyways, I call it Lyra. It allows you to set up custom architectures, with support for deep networks, and work with raw input data in the form of an array of doubles (as in the datatype) with a value between 0-1. Maybe I will add support for preset networks with support for numbers soon. I don't know. Feedback would definitely be appreciated. Also, don't be surprised if it does not work altogether.

GitHub