I’m looking forward to this semester’s vibe coding workshop for librarians. I was notified that I was accepted into the program yesterday. It should be fun! I’m told we’ll be using Claude Code, so I set this up on my laptop last night. First of all, I don’t particularly trust Claude Code. Allowing an agent… Continue reading Claude code
Category: learning
Vibe
I have applied to what I’ve been calling the “vibe coding workshop,” which is more officially known as the Agentic AI Peer-Mentoring Program. It’s an interesting initiative from CUNY’s Office of Library Services to teach CUNY librarians how to code with agentic AI. To be fair, I suspect that most people who learn to code… Continue reading Vibe
Limits
One thing I’ve come to recognize over my time as a programmer is where my limits lie. I’m not a super talented programmer: I started too late in life; and I have a job as a librarian, which prevents me from learning about code full time. So I do what I can. The problem with… Continue reading Limits
Bilingual
I’m currently reading a book by Kyran Dale called Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript, and it’s super interesting. In my experience, it’s very unusual to find a fully bilingual programming book. This is a great example. Most technical books, for better or worse, focus exclusively on one programming language. I’m still in the early… Continue reading Bilingual
What’s next with learning JavaScript
I confess that I mostly use JavaScript as if it were an extension of CSS. What I mean is that I am mostly using it to manipulate elements in the DOM, usually for appearance’s sake. I’m not building applications, or even using JS in a systematic way to solve problems that require some kind of… Continue reading What’s next with learning JavaScript
Code4Lib debrief
Well, Code4Lib wrapped up today, and it was as good as I had hoped it would be. It’s wonderful to talk to librarians who share similar responsibilities, interests and preoccupations to mine. I feel a great deal of mutual support and empathy for these colleagues who are on similar paths. The conference sessions got me… Continue reading Code4Lib debrief
Self-taught
A very democratic trait amongst programmers is that they are generally very open to people who are self-taught. I assume this is because the typical yardstick of a good programmer is what they can produce with code, not their credentials. In some respects, this is very meritocratic, and in theory you can do well if… Continue reading Self-taught
How I spent my weekend
I’ve spent much of this holiday weekend on Discord, asking questions. This is because I’ve been working on an overhaul of the Open Journal Matcher, and it has led me to work with technologies that I find very unfamiliar (hello, task queues!), so I have a lot to ask. Discord channels focused on very specific… Continue reading How I spent my weekend
After the storm
For a number of years, all I wanted to spend my time on was code. This is apparently a common occurrence among new programmers. It is easy to get obsessed, over-focused and maniacal about learning programming. This can be very productive; it is also often a little bit unhealthy. Anyhow, I think I am recovering… Continue reading After the storm
Reaching in
I am a fan of technologies that you can reach into. I mean this metaphorically, of course. I like computing tools that you can tinker with and make your own. Usually – although not always – these are openly licensed, and usually they deliberately have these affordances. As an occasional teacher of technical workshops, I… Continue reading Reaching in
