01 Apr 2025 #writing
We can’t compete with AI on speed.
AI is getting faster, better, stronger, and cheaper. In seconds, it can produce a post about almost any topic in any writing style. An essay about climate change in the style of Hemingway? AI spits it out. Beep, beep, boop!
The battle against AI-generated content is lost.
Even if one day AI writes better and faster, I’ll still write because:
- Writing is learning: If you want to check if you understand a subject, try writing about it.
- Writing is teaching: You don’t need a lecture hall to teach or share anything. Simply write about it somewhere on the internet.
- Writing brings clear thinking: This reason is strong enough not to outsource our writing to AI.
- Writing is building a time capsule: Writing is leaving breadcrumbs of what we were learning and doing. It’s leaving success clues. It’s a time capsule.
- Writing is free, public therapy: In 2024, I applied to FAANG and failed. Instead of ranting that hiring is broken, I decided to write about it. It was liberating.
- Writing is an exercise for my creative mind: After ditching my to-do lists, writing is part of my daily routine to do something for my body, mind, and spirit each day.
And more importantly, 7. writing helped me recover from burnout last year.
Last year, I took officially my first writing class.
It was the first step toward taking my writing seriously after about five years of blogging. Writing daily was part of welcoming a sense of joy into my life after all the dissatisfaction and disengagement of burning out.
In the end, writing rescued me.
Even if AI splits the world into writers and write-nots, even if it spits words faster than I ever could, I’ll continue writing, for my health, for my joy, for myself. I’d like to be a writer.
PS: This is my answer to Ron Markley’s Medium post titled: What if one day AI writes better than you? Will you still write?.
31 Mar 2025 #misc
For 8 years, calculators are banned in math class.
We can only use calculators after we learn to do arithmetic by hand, like multiplying and dividing 2- and 3-figure numbers manually. We have to learn the procedure first.
We should use AI the same way, only after we know how to do the procedure by hand.
If you aren’t comfortable with coding yet, don’t ask AI to generate code.
If you aren’t comfortable with writing, don’t ask AI to generate any text. Instead, use it to proofread and critique your writing.
AI should be like calculators in math: a tool to make us faster if we know what we’re doing. They can’t do the thinking part for us. That’s still on us.
30 Mar 2025 #csharp
Is it MM or mm for months when formatting dates? Is it yyyy-MM-dd or yyyy-mm-dd?
I always forgot which one to use…until I figured out an easy mnemonic.
MM vs mm
Ask yourself: Which one represents a larger time frame? Months or minutes?
Since one month is larger than one minute, it’s M for months. An uppercase m is larger than a lowercase m. Write, anyDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd").
mm vs fff
Then, what is it for milliseconds? Isn’t it mm?
Now, ask yourself: Which one is faster? One minute or one millisecond?
Since one millisecond is faster, write f instead of m. Write anyDate.ToString("hh:mm:ss.fff").
Easy, peasy now!
29 Mar 2025 #career #interview
If you’ve been around long enough in tech, you know hiring is broken.
We all have horror interview stories. It’s a shared experience all the way from small companies trying to imitate FAANG processes and large companies with dozens of “phases” to go through.
I’m not the exception, so here are two of my horror stories and a lesson.
They wanted to test my IQ
Before the bubble of 2020, a recruiter from a staffing company reached out on LinkedIn.
The meeting had an awkward start. The recruiter refused to speak in our native language, but in English. I might understand that, since they worked with American clients.
But the horrific part came when she told me they were going to test my IQ to see if I was “smart enough” to work with them. At that moment the interview ended for me. Run, Forrest, run!
They wanted a screen-recording
I’ve been asked to solve take-home interview challenges more than once.
But this time, with another staffing company, I had an unusual interview challenge: not only did I have to solve a medium-size coding exercise, but also record my screen while explaining out loud my thought process, in no more than 2 hours, and send them a link.
I guess a poor soul had to watch my recording at 2x, if anyone ever watched it. My thought was to create a YouTube channel and solve it live. At least, it would count towards the watch time to monetize a YouTube account. Of course, I didn’t continue.
Probably I had more horror stories I can’t remember.
The lesson
Hiring is a two-way street: you’re evaluating them the same way they’re evaluating you.
The first meeting shows how they’re going to treat you as an employee. And if you notice red flags during the process, like unclear expectations and unrealistic demands, imagine what it would be like working there.
Always ask about the next steps, salary, and compensation in the first meeting.
When I was job hunting, my rule was to step away if they didn’t share salary details in the first meeting. Why waste months only to discover they’re offering half of your current salary?
28 Mar 2025 #career
Has this also happened to you?
You’re in a meeting discussing a technical issue or a bug. After many ideas, you share yours. But it passes unnoticed.
Since there was no consensus, another meeting is scheduled. But this time with a figure of authority or expertise: an architect, director, or VP.
Surprisingly enough, they share the same idea as yours. But this time, it’s considered.
That’s when you say “I said the same thing, but since I’m not an architect, director, or VP nobody listened.” Arrggg!
Sure, those moments are frustrating. But they earn us points in our authority and trust score.
It’s not only about sharing good ideas, but how we present them and how others perceive us, just another team member or a trusted one.
That’s what I call: the not-an-architect effect. A reminder that how we present our ideas is as important as the ideas themselves.