🚕 A Cab Ride, Dev Blogs, and Feeding the Builder’s Brain
A few days ago I was travelling in a cab and doing nothing, so I thought to read some dev blogs here and there. I came across GitHub's blog on Semantic code searching (which I thought was the most awesome thing ever, why didn't I ever think of that) I mean think about it, whether its locally or online, getting code snippet outputs for a natural laguage query is so awesome. It's almost like RAG but instead of textual context we give code context and then ask questions. Pretty cool if you ask me.
đź”— Article link:
https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/machine-learning/towards-natural-language-semantic-code-search/
Then I thought that why don't I read more tech blogs, I mean, I think most cs students like me spend much of their time just sitting, waiting for a groundbreaking idea to come up in our heads. We think that we can't think of anything cool, so we don't feel the urge to build anything else. But how will you get ideas unless you feed your brain some food on what good ideas look and feel like.
A good writer is someone who has read much much more than he has written. Writers read so much stuff that they can't contain it and then it flows. Similarly when you read about what other people have built, you will have so many ideas that you won't be able to contain them, and then a builder will born.
I'm drifting away from the topic.... After these a few more of these blogs, I thought I would like to read how a good engineer thinks in his daily life, so I googled "Diary of a Software Developer" but I didn't get too many things. So I thought why not we should make our own?? I have read many other people also suggesting that everyone should have their own software journal. So here are my two cents of thoughts as a diary entry.
Top comments (5)
This is literally me every cab ride! đźš•
Last week I discovered VS Code's "Inline Chat" during a commute and felt the same excitement. There's something special about those "aha moments" when you're not even trying to work.
Also, semantic code search is indeed underrated. I've started using it in my daily workflow and it's like Google for my own codebase. Game changer!
I know! it makes you want to make something like this as well, so simple yet so helpful!
I once had one, but I stopped writing on it more than fifteen years ago. It was a WordPress site I no longer have online. There, I used to write about code and tools I found interesting during my work, and people found that useful. I wrote about how I solve problems and build my projects.
The problem is, today, more and more people are interested in AI-generated code. More and more projects are built using AI, and I'm afraid fewer and fewer people will be interested in how to build things.
A friend told me a few days ago that at his work, everyone wanted to share prompt hints and tricks, not actual code or projects, so I wonder if a software journal will be of any help at all.
That's so true! I also think that as AI generated code is becoming better and better, people will start to care less about implementations and more about ideas. I think we are quickly going in the time where .md files will have much more interest to people than .c files
It's a shame, because I really love writing code. I kept thinking about what you said, and you might be right. No matter whether the solution involves coding or not, it is very interesting to see how someone comes up with a solution, so that a development journal could be a great resource for other developers.