Less than personal. Dawid Laszuk's world.

Align to work with AI

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

AI-powered code assistants are becoming an integral part of modern programming, influencing how developers write and structure their code. These assistants perform well with commonly used languages and frameworks but struggle with less familiar ones, raising questions about their broader impact. As AI-generated code becomes more widespread, programming patterns may shift in ways that favor certain technologies over others. This trend could reshape coding practices, prompting discussions about the long-term effects of AI on software development.

TIL - Ubuntu - dynamic background

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It should've been easy but it wasn't. To setup a dynamic background, i.e. one that wallpaper between light and dark modes, you need: * Two different wallpapers (duh!) * Locate where to put a config * Write a config into an xml file Assuming you have `light.jpeg` and `dark.jpeg` files in dir `/home/user/wallpapers`. Create an xml file, e.g. called `my_dynamic_wallpaper.xml` with the following content

TIL - VSCode copilot debug is great

Thur, 26 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just as I was getting tired of all these incorrect suggestions by the Github Copilot, I learned about its `copilot-debug` option. When executing something in the (VSCode built-in) terminal, if you append `copilot-debug` to its name, it'll try to figure out vscode setting for debugging. It can take a while to get the proper VSCode launch.json config, but once it's there, you can just save it. They also provide a *nice* prompt asking what you want to do with the output (of the debug config). I'm not sure how it works on more complicated setups. Likely, not great, as with most LLMs on more convoluted questions, but I don't recommend anyone rely on it for difficult tasks (yet). Anyway, it came in handy today. I hope I won't forget about it the next time I want to debug something. Here's release note for the feature: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_96#_debugging-with-copilot

Independent but not alone - have a buddy

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One thing I've seen people conflate is "Independent" and "Alone". Especially at work. Having a project and working on it by yourself doesn't mean that no one else should be involved. There are multiple ways how others could help without directly working on the project. In fact, I always recommend project leaders to have a project buddy. Even if they're the only person who is going to design, execute and own, it helps to have someone to discuss the project. The buddy's involvement can vary from just listening (a.k.a. "rubber ducking") to suggesting some relevant resources or proposing design modifications.

AI is not just ifs

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A common joke in the corporate world is that "AI is just a bunch of `if` statements." It's funny on a few levels which is why I'd like to make it unfunny. I'm taking the burden because people are stretching this joke and starting to believe it is true.

Terminal Agent

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There's a tool called Terminal Agent - check it out on GitHub at https://github.com/laszukdawid/terminal-agent.

It's an interface for making LLM requests from the terminal. It helps with asking questions (primarily regarding Unix tooling and commands) and can perform basic agent functions, like executing Unix commands. Of course, it's still under development with more features to come, but I'm writing about it because it's already quite useful.

HomeHero - next iteration

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

HomeHero - next iteration

It's time for me to write an "I'm excited to share" blog post. This time, the excitement is regarding the second phase of the HomeHero app. The HomeHero app was released a few months back, initially more of a proof of concept than a useful tool. I released it to gather early feedback fom friends and family. The feedback was positive, but it was clear that the app needed improvement. I've been working on it since then, and I'm proud to say that it's now a (more) useful tool! Of course, there's plenty of room for further enhancements, but I'm happy with the progress so far.

What's new?

Two significant changes are the UI and the custom item types.

Improved User Interface

Initial users (myself included) really didn't like the look and feel. It was ugly. I'm not a designer and I prefer usability rather than looks, but it was ugly. Others also didn't like it as it looked half-baked and, well, ugly. I've updated the UI significantly, and while it isn't perfect, it's much better now.

Custom Item Types

A key piece of feedback was that people didn't care about appliances as much as I do. Fair enough! However, it turns out that everyone has something else that they care about in a similar way. Examples include plants, books, and craft supplies. There isn't an easy way to organize and keep track of these items.

To address this, I've added custom item types. This feature allows users to specify what they want to track, what is important to them. We are (cough cough) *democratizing* the tracking of things by letting users decide what "things" are!

What's next?

The app isn't perfect, and there are many improvements and additions I'd like to make:

Better photos and files handling, especially improving local previews and adding more sharing options
Improving automation and "one-click" experiences, such as linking to or importing from external resources

The mantra is: Inventory management is easier when there's less of it.

Besides app improvements, I'm also enhancing my internal tooling. I started this journey almost from scratch. My backend is in Go, the frontend is in Flutter, and the cloud provider is not one of the big four. Except for Go, everything else was new to me, which meant learning many basics and reinventing tools available in other ecosystems. This includes working with GenAI components. (Yes, of course, there are GenAI components in the app and tooling!) As I polish these tools, I might start sharing them as well.

Call to action

What's the call to action here? Give HomeHero a go! Android user? Visit the Google Play Store and search for HomeHero. Do you prefer the web? Visit HomeHero console and start tracking your items and tasks. Let me know your thoughts, feelings, desires, and frustrations. I'm open to feedback and eager to make this app better for you.

Do repeat yourself

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It's Ok to repeat yourself. You've likely heard this before. You might have heard this so many times that you're tired of hearing it again. If not, then congratulations you're about to read something new. Otherwise, time to chose whether to read on or not. ### The Importance of Repetition Repeating is important. For the "repeater," it's about consolidating and organizing the message. Our opinions change over time, sometimes faster than we think. There's a chance that what you believed in, even if it's something technical, might not resonate with you anymore as you learn about other relevant topics. Most people need to actively "visit" a thought to check it; saying it aloud or writing it down is a good way to do that. Saying it aloud to someone else has the added benefit of seeing and hearing their reaction. You might either help someone learn something new, or you might hear feedback that will help you validate your thought. It's a win-win situation, provided you're both civil about it. ### Why we avoid repeating ourselves One of the most common reasons why people avoid repeating themselves is because they don't like to repeat themselves, and they don't like to hear something they already know again. Yes, let me repeat that: I believe we avoid repeating ourselves because we don't like to repeat. We might think, "Why tell something again and again? It's a waste of time. Shouldn't they already know this? I mentioned this at some point." Reading this sentence might make the problem quite clear, but, thematically, let me repeat the conclusion: they aren't you. There are many reasons why they might not have heard this; for one, weren't around when you said it, or they contemplated on the previous point, or there was an explosion nearby and they didn't hear it. So, it's less about you and more about them. Sorry. ### Dealing with repetition-averse listeners Lastly, and perhaps the most difficult part: what if you're sharing something with someone who has heard this before and doesn't like hearing things again? This is indeed a problem. I usually explain that I didn't have bad intentions. I add that I prefer to err on the side of over-explaining and risk being perceived as annoying, rather than implicitly expecting them to know everything and closing doors in case they don't. Basically, I'd rather waste 10 seconds now than leave awkwardness that lasts much longer. If they don't like to listen, they might not want to listen to you in the first place. And if they are ok with listening... maybe repeat this internet message to them?

TIL - Finding package that imports a module

Sat, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The best way to understand what an import is introducing is to remove it and see what breaks. The even better way is to not do implicit imports. But sometimes we can't have things we like. I've been software engineering for, I think, a long while but still often get confused by which imports introduce what. Especially in java, javascript and dart/flutter. When working with IDE, commenting out an import often triggers validation error and the IDE will highligh which symbols are missing.

Principles of improvement

Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No one plans to fail, yet everyone has seen failed projects. Why is that? I don't know. At least one of the reasons for failed projects is the over-reliance on good intentions and hope that it'll *just* work out. We're going to make things good because we want to make good things so they're going to be good. Somehow, that isn't enough. A project can still fail and when that happens and it's our work then we justify it with external factors. Yet, when it's someone else's project the same arguments sound like excuses. After the fact it's easy to point out the *obvious* or the *logical* changes that should have been made. Do I have a solution for that? Not entirely. However, over the years, I have developed and adopted some principles that I believe help me in making things better.

Coming soon - HomeHero

Wed, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I've been working on another bigger project. It's called HomeHero and it's coming soon. Releasing a new project is always a bit scary. On one hand, I know that the sooner I release it, the sooner I can get feedback and improve it. However, I also know that the first impression is important and I want to make sure that it's a good one. There are still some things to polish and test but I'm excited of what comes. I've been using it for own purposes for a while now and it's been a great help.

TIL - Sending docker images manually

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes we want to send a docker image to dev or staging environment. That's for testing a small change, for example extra logs for debuging. One could push the image to a registry with some throw away tag, e.g. `dev`, and then pull it on the other side. But that's unnecessary push to and pull from the registry. Instead, we can save the image to a file and then load it from the file.

Central Limit Theorem of behaviour

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As we get older, our thoughts solidify a bit. We are unintentionally drawn into more experiments, we get more data, and we learn more theories that help us to make sense of the world. If we're lucky, these experiments are diverse enough to sample from "real-life" distribution, rather than repeating the same situation over and over again. If we're super lucky, we also get to learn about the central limit theorem.

TIL - Python argparser prefix matching

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Python has a built in argument parser called argparser. It's the first library most folks use when writing a quick CLI tool. However, it's often quickly abandoned once the app grows in complexity. Unfrotunately, too quickly.

TIL - SSH connection in Docker image

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Had a use case to checkout a git repository (from Github) via ssh in a Docker image. Turns out that it isn't simple and I'm not entirely sure what's the reason. This entry is a sorrow lesson without a fix. Help is welcome.

TIL - Golang binaries in Python

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

To use golang binaries in Python, one can do that by first converting golang programs into shared libraries and then calling them from Python. This can be done by using the `cgo` package in golang. The following is an example of how to do this:

TIL - Boto3 for AWS GovCloud

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When working with AWS in GovCloud, it turned out that the boto3 library is not configured to work with GovCloud by default. This is because the GovCloud region is not included in the default list of regions. To fix this, you can add the GovCloud region to the list of regions in the boto3 library. This can be done by adding the following code to your Python script:

Thematic quarters

Sat, 02 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Resolutions are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they give us hope and motivation to do something new. On the other hand, they can be difficult to achieve because they are typically big goals. It's hard to change oneself into a new mold without a driving motivation and stimuli. We're used to our day-to-day routines, and if we don't pay attention or are under stress, we'll default to them.

Unsuppervised learning in a supervised problem

Sat, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Unsupervised learning is a powerful technique in machine learning, particularly when dealing with datasets where labeled data is unavailable. It allows the model to identify patterns, structures, and relationships in the input data without any human supervision or guidance. This can be particularly useful for tasks such as categorizing images, identifying anomalies in time series data, or detecting outliers in graphs. There is a common misconception that unsupervised learning methods, such as K-means or Isolation Forest, cannot be validated. While it may be difficult to validate the method itself, validating the results of the method and ensuring that they provide acceptable outcomes is rarely challenging. There may not be an objective truth, but there are plenty of subjective "yeah, that looks good." Humans are adept at spotting patterns and can often evaluate the quality of results simply by inspecting them. In fact, many algorithms were created to match our intuition on how a problem could be solved.

Quick tips on ML Infrastructure

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

ML infrastructure plays a crucial role in the success of a machine learning project. Building and maintaining ML infrastructure can be complex and time-consuming, especially when started from scratch for each project. Obviously, horses for courses; some project are one-offs and optimizing might derail your enthusiasm, and some project are so large that everything becomes an exception. Most projects, however, are (un)fortunately going to be very similar from high-level perspective. Each will need some data storage, computation units and means to deploy models. Here are a few short tips.

Time off - try it yourself

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It's been over a year since I left a stable and well paying job, and focused more on myself. A year feels like a nice unit of time to summarize over but I didn't feel the need to say something. Until now. Maybe it’s worth sharing what I’ve been sharing with everyone who wanted to listen.

Agents Bar is on hiatus

Agents Bar - First newsletter