DEV Community: Harsh Shukla

Apple’s “Illusion of Thinking” — My Takeaways

Harsh Shukla — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 07:13:44 +0000

Apple recently published a research paper titled “The Illusion of Thinking.”

It digs into how large language models (LLMs) don’t actually think—but often give the appearance of reasoning.

I found this fascinating, because it directly touches on one of the biggest open questions in AI:

Do LLMs really reason, or do they just mimic reasoning patterns?

When a model explains its steps, is it genuine reasoning, or a narrative built after the fact?

How do we, as developers, evaluate “thinking” in machines without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism?

I recently wrote a blog about this on Medium (published via Level Up Coding) where I broke down the paper, added examples, and shared what this means for us as engineers working with AI systems.

Read my Blog here

I’d love to hear your take:

Do you think reasoning in LLMs is an illusion, or are we just at the early stages of genuine machine reasoning?
How should we design with this limitation in mind?

Why this matters?

As builders, we often rely on LLM “reasoning” for coding help, decision-making, or even system design. If that reasoning is an illusion, then our guardrails and evaluation strategies matter more than ever.

Would love to spark a conversation on this

humanize-this v2.0 — Make Your Data Talk Like a Human

Harsh Shukla — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:07:50 +0000

Most apps speak machine. Great apps speak human.

I just released humanize-this v2.0, a zero-dependency, TypeScript-native utility that makes your machine-readable data feel like it was handcrafted for humans.

🆕 What’s new in v2.0?

-> Indian/International Number System Support
-> Format large numbers like ₹1.5Cr, 2L, etc. out of the box.
-> Time Formatting
-> Human-friendly phrases like just now, 2 days ago, etc.
-> i18n support and locale aware
-> New Formatters Added
--> slug(): Create URL-friendly strings
--> ordinal(): 1st, 2nd, 3rd...
--> url(), plural(), and more

-> Improved Error Handling
-> Functions fail gracefully with meaningful fallbacks.

Even Smaller Bundle
~5KB gzipped, tree-shakeable, ESM + CJS, works in browser and Node.

import { humanize } from "humanize-this";

humanize.currency(15000000);   // ₹1.50Cr
humanize.slug("Let's Build!")  // lets-build
humanize.timeAgo(new Date())   // just now

Try it out

-> npm: humanize-this
-> GitHub: github.com/Shuklax/humanize-this

Open source. Actively maintained. Ideas and feedback are super welcome.
If you find it useful, a ⭐ on GitHub would mean a lot.

humanize-this

Harsh Shukla — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 10:43:49 +0000

Just shipped a small utility package to NPM: humanize-this

It helps make machine-readable data friendlier for humans:

humanize.bytes(2048) → "2 KB"

humanize.time(90) → "1 min 30 sec"

humanize.timeAgo(date) → "5 min ago"

humanize.slug("Let's Build!") → "lets-build"

✅ 100% TypeScript
✅ Zero dependencies
✅ Tested with Vitest

The goal? Avoid rewriting the same formatting logic in dashboards, logs, and side projects.

Here's the GitHub repo if you'd like to take a look or suggest improvements:
🔗 https://github.com/Shuklax/humanize-this

Appreciate any feedback — especially from folks who’ve published NPM packages or use formatting utilities like this. 🙏

javascript #typescript #npm #opensource #buildinpublic #developer