DEV Community: Frank Font

Yeah I'm Vibe Coding

Frank Font — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 03:16:02 +0000

Random people at work reach out to me to ask what I'm doing using so much of the Agentic AI service that our company has signed up for. I'm using more than most people at this multi-thousand employee company.

I'm vibe coding. I hate the term. I'm not "vibing". I'm using my extensive computer science experience and insight to direct several AI agents on different tasks sometimes in completely different projects at the same time.

They are working at the same time, I am not. I am working with one at a time -- and moving onto the next AI as the first is working on its task. Sometimes an agent works for minutes, sometimes it works for hours. Meantime, I'm working with other agents -- or getting coffee or chatting with colleagues.

Just like working with a team of junior programmers, I give them some insights to get started and send them on their way.

Then I check on what they produce -- because many times the work is bad. It needs correction.

Rarely do I correct by changing code directly -- no, just as working with junior programmers, most corrections involve me telling the AI what to fix and then were to re-focus its efforts.

These AIs are amazing. Some of the results are impossible for a person to produce in less than days -- but they are produced in minutes.

Guess I'm vibe coding. It's particularly effective because I know how to code without AI.

If you have practical computer programming experience - jump in. Use your knowledge to guide these tools to produce more. Amplify your productivity.

This is the new paradigm. It is not a fad. It works too well.

Every Requirement is a Functional Requirement

Frank Font — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 12:36:21 +0000

When developing software there is no such thing as a "Non-functional requirement". All requirements are functional requirements.

Agree? Disagree?

Is the Tech Boom Over?

Frank Font — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 14:52:36 +0000

I spoke with a recent Computer Science graduate from a well-regarded United States university. She sent out over 200 applications and got only 7 interviews.

She is very good and knows what she is doing. She works at the same company I work at, and her coworkers have only been impressed.

Ten years ago these people would have had job offers before graduating.

Is the excitement and opportunity surrounding Computer Software development over?

Build Something Amazing

Frank Font — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:52:07 +0000

The year 2023 is when Artificial Intelligence (AI) changes everything, especially in the workplace. Now more than ever connecting and collaborating with colleagues and peers, or even other skilled hobbyists is more important than before.

Collaboration is a superpower, and we will need it to level up past AI. People effectively flowing together can build amazing things and change direction faster than AI alone can today.

The Twigflo.com application is free and is different. And we need different now more than before.

Create an account and use it today for free.

Open Question: How Can AI Help Instead of Hurt?

Frank Font — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 02:37:40 +0000

The ChatGPT public phenomenon has given us a glimpse of what is to come.

Making dark predictions is easy. Too many people do that -- on almost any topic.

Predicting how a disruptive technology can lead to a better future for the general population is not as easy.

Question: What steps would need to fall in place for mankind, all ages and skill levels, to have a better working and living future 20 years from now instead of a darker one as AI technologies take over more functions that today are owned by living-breathing-creative human beings?

Testing the Limits of GPT3

Frank Font — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 14:08:12 +0000

We've integrated the GPT3 Machine Learning AI into our Twigflo.com product to propose planning steps automatically.

Can you think of a topic it cannot help plan? It can propose subtasks for building a website in React, keeping Bees to make honey, and making a quantum computer.

Where is the limit?

Creating an account is free. Can you find the limit? Curious for feedback!

Talking TO your Phone

Frank Font — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 12:55:29 +0000

Do you send text messages? Of course you do, anybody reading this was either born into a world where texting is the norm or has adapted to it. I've adapted to it.

Do you type or do you let the AI in your phone type the words you speak? For a lot of reasons, I regularly lean on the speech-to-text feature of my phone. The messages make me seem drunk too many times. Words I did not say get sent.

Either I mumble ( probably do ) or/and the AI is just not that good yet. The AI should get better, because I'm not getting clearer.

Also spell check does not help.

People will ask me if they can reschedule a meeting or they will apologize for some small thing, and because I am a man of the moment ( or of a few moments ago ) I send them back np ( which cool people taught me stands for "no problem".)

Of course the spell-check on my phone converts that to NO as a reply making it seem like I am very upset.

I'm so lazy sometimes I don't even fix it. Lazy is how I started using speech-to-text so this was predictable.

What has your experience with this technology been like?

Migrating to Drupal 10

Frank Font — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 13:17:21 +0000

How would you plan your Drupal migration? Here is how one person planned their's using Twigflo.

Link to live template

Wishful Programming

Frank Font — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 09:47:00 +0000

I'm sure I could write that program if I knew how to do that one thing.
And I could do that one thing if I knew how to do that other thing.
Wish I knew how to do that stuff.

Creating Programs With Wishes

There is a practical software development strategy which a Computer Science professor ( many years ago ) described to our class as "wishful programming" and over the years I've successfully applied it, whatever the language.

It is very simple.

Here is the gist of the approach:

Stub out a function ( or method or module ) with just a name and no body content.
For the body, call functions ( or methods etc ) that you wish existed, then stub out those functions and methods too.
Keep doing this until you have a collection of stubs that together, if they did anything real, would complete your program.

The magic is that in the process of doing that you are breaking down the task into smaller pieces. And as you do it, you are shifting the heavy lifting into smaller functions ( or methods ) at the edges.

It really does work.

More recently I've learned the above approach is an example of the "backcasting" technique.

The application of this idea also ties into becoming a more creative person, which I wrote something about here.

If you've worked this way before, let me know. Let's compare notes.

Contest: Share a Good Plan

Frank Font — Sun, 10 Jul 2022 12:43:00 +0000

July Twigflo Creative Challenge

The founders of Twigflo are offering a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate to the winner of the best mission diagram shared here in this thread. Participation is free.

How to Enter

Log into Twigflo and create a mission diagram which you feel does the following:

Your mission diagram explains something you feel is important or useful
You mark the access scope of your diagram as "Public" and paste the URL into a reply of this post. (Marking it public enables other people, including the judges, to view your diagram.)
Your reply here includes the URL to your shared diagram and an explanation of how you think it may be helpful to someone or how you yourself find it helpful for your needs.

One entry per reply. No more than five entries per person.

Winner Selection

Replies to this thread must be dated no later than July 31 2022. Winner will be announced in this thread on August 5th 2022.

The Twigflo founders will look for the mission diagram that they feel most effectively communicates an important insight that could also help others. Their decision will be final.

Example Missions

These examples are dry. You can do better! (We are sure of it.)

Does this make sense to anyone?

Frank Font — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:01:51 +0000

My colleagues and I are burned out on standard agile tools. Where are radical new thoughts in the last 20+ years?

We are building something so unfamiliarly new that we suspect no one understands it.

In fact, we know from limited experiments so far that most people do not get it.

Does the concept make sense to you when you try it out?

Is it too complicated for most people to understand? Does it require too much abstract sophistication? Are we simply wrong with the whole idea?

Can you make sense of it? If not, feel free to roast it, and us, here on this thread.

Twigflo.com

Goodbye Paint.net

Frank Font — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 12:39:24 +0000

Paint.net is great. I love it. For years it was like an obscure gem somehow sitting out in the open within reach of every Windows user. I reached out and started using it long ago, probably since it was made available by some college professor out West somewhere.

But now I have a Mac and needed to switch. Reluctantly I dove into Gimp.

I've tried Gimp before, waded in to try some simple things over the years. Every time left screaming wondering why is this so hard and why am I so dumb? Always ended up back at Paint.net.

Need does something to us. I needed to make some text borders and layer some icons on a logo recently and I really wanted to use my shiny new Mac for a change. So I googled and followed some simple steps. Took too long. But now I know how to do this.

Did the same thing again recently and did not need the tutorial. And it took very little time. And the results were better than what I would have gotten from Paint.net.

Guess I prefer Gimp for graphics editing now. And I'm okay with that.