Thirty-seven years ago, at about 11 a.m., at the Rocca Brancaleone Park, my then-girlfriend and I kissed for the first time under a tree. We decided immediately not to get together because we were classmates1, and we didn’t want to complicate our lives. Right. We have been together ever since and will celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary next week. Our three sons are the fruitful result of that teenage affair....
What Open AI just did
Open AI just released ChatGPT 4o. The launch demo is available on YouTube, and yes, it is impressive. They did not launch v5, though, and 4o is only incremental, not exponential, as v4 has been compared to its predecessor. It may mean we’re at the end of the “exponential growth” phase of LLM models. However, the most critical aspect of this release is not technical, as Ethan Mollick correctly pinpoints in his timely What Open AI Did post:...
A walk on the beach [video]
I took a walk on the beach last weekend. I never frequent Lido Adriano. It is much better than I expected, especially out of season.
The best thing I have read on ADHD
I read ADHD—A Lifelong Struggle today. It’s the best thing I’ve read on ADHD so far. Its advice is grounded in experience and applies to everyone: those who think ADHD is a crock or, worse, an excuse, those who suffer from it, and those who have family members or friends who suffer from it. And we all punish ourselves. That’s the real tragedy of this illness. We are our biggest detractors because we know what we’re capable of....
C# 12 Collection Expressions
This is a follow-up post to C# 12 Primary Constructors. Like that article, this one originates from the preparation notes for my presentation at the ABP Dotnet Conference 2024. I love collection expressions. Like primary constructors, collection expressions will see a significant adoption in the long run. Collection expressions introduce a new way to initialize common collection values in a terse, unified syntax. This is how we initialize collections today:...
Quoting John Gruber
The standard shouldn’t be never to make a mistake. It’s to make as few mistakes as possible, but quickly recognize, acknowledge, and address the ones you do make. – John Gruber
C# 12 Primary Constructors
I wrapped up my C# 12 session at the ABP Dotnet Conference 2024, and I wanted to share the take-home points, at least about the most relevant features in this language version. Posting the slides made no sense as they were minimal; all the content was packed in the live demo. In a follow-up post, I plan to address Collection Expressions (done) and maybe “type any aliases”; this is about Primary Constructors....
In the pinewood [video]
I went for a walk in the local pinewood the other day. It’s one of my favorite places, especially the least frequented parts, where one can walk for hours (and risk getting lost) without meeting anyone. I cut it shorter this time as it started to drip rain, and I had nothing with me.
Quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson
I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (debated, see here)
Quoting Moxie Marlinspike
It’s very fast to build something that’s 90% of a solution. The problem is that the last 10% of building something is usually the hard part which really matters, and with a black box at the center of the product, it feels much more difficult to me to nail that remaining 10%. Closing that gap with gen AI feels much more fickle to me than a normal engineering problem. It could be that I’m unfamiliar with it, but I also wonder if some classes of generative AI based products are just doomed to mediocrity as a result....