Today, an AI review tool used by my workplace reviewed some code that I wrote, and incorrectly claimed that it would introduce a bug because a global variable I created could “be available to multiple browser tabs” (that’s not how browser JavaScript works).Just in case I was mistaken, I explained to the AI why I […]
Read more: https://danq.me/2026/02/25/to-really-foul-things-up-you-need-an-ai/

#note #ai #firstup #javascript #programming #work

Today, an AI review tool used by my workplace reviewed some code that I wrote, and incorrectly claimed that it would introduce a bug because a global variable I created could "be available to multiple browser tabs" (that's not how browser JavaScript works).

Just in case I was mistaken, I explained to the AI why I thought it was wrong, and asked it to explain itself.

To do so, the LLM wrote a PR to propose adding some code to use our application's save mechanism to pass the data back, via the server, and to any other browser tab, thereby creating the problem that it claimed existed.

This isn't even the most-efficient way to create this problem. localStorage would have been better.

So in other words, today I watched an AI:
(a) claim to have discovered a problem (that doesn't exist),
(b) when challenged, attempt to create the problem (that wasn't needed), and
(c) do so in a way that was suboptimal.

Humans aren't perfect. A human could easily make one of these mistakes. Under some circumstances, a human might even have made two of these mistakes. But to make all three? That took an AI.

What's the old saying? "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer."

#note #ai #work #firstup #programming #javascript

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2026/02/25/to-really-foul-things-up-you-need-an-ai/

Highlight of my workday was debugging an issue that turned out to be nothing like what the reporter had diagnosed.The report suggested that our system was having problems parsing URLs with colons in the pathname, suggesting perhaps an encoding issue. It wasn’t until I took a deep dive into the logs that I realised that […]
Read more: https://danq.me/2026/01/28/mocking-sharepoint/

#note #firstup #http #programming #ruby #testing #web #work

Highlight of my workday was debugging an issue that turned out to be nothing like what the reporter had diagnosed.

The report suggested that our system was having problems parsing URLs with colons in the pathname, suggesting perhaps an encoding issue. It wasn't until I took a deep dive into the logs that I realised that this was a secondary characteristic of many URLs found in customers' SharePoint installations. And many of those URLs get redirected. And SharePoint often uses relative URLs when it sends redirections. And it turned out that our systems' redirect handler... wasn't correctly handling relative URLs.

It all turned into a hundred line automated test to mock SharePoint and demonstrate the problem... followed by a tiny two-line fix to the actual code. And probably the most-satisfying part of my workday!

#note #testing #http #web #ruby #firstup #work #programming

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2026/01/28/mocking-sharepoint/

The other night, I encountered an optical illusion by which I could see a particular partially-obstructed light only when it was in my peripheral vision. This put me in mind of the experience of being only peripherally able to see the internalised quirks of your employer that were once obvious to you, and this lead me to reflect a little on my first six months at Firstup.
Read more: https://danq.me/2026/01/19/peripheral-vision/

#article #clothes #employment #eyes #firstup #job #opticalIllusion #showerThoughts #vision #work

In my first few weeks at my new employer, my code contributions have added 218 lines of code, deleted 2,663. Only one of my PRs has resulted in a net increase in the size of their codebases (by two lines).

I need to pick up the pace if I'm going to reach the ultimate goal of deleting ALL of the code within my lifetime. (That's the ultimate aim, right?)

#note #firstup #job #work #programming #github #sourceControl #employment

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2025/08/01/26999/

I spent most of a day getting my new development environment set up, because I kept hitting issues that nobody at my new employer had experienced before. A "perfect storm" of coincidences that conspired together to completely wreck my chance of a simple setup.

The factors?
- Apple's M4 processors remove the SVE architecture and its instruction set, which was present in the M1 through M3
- The Colima dockerisation tool still reports to arm64 containers that SVE is available
- Java < 24 will, by default, use SVE for some functions if it's told that it's available
- Opensearch 2.x will not run on Java > 23

If ANY ONE of those statements were not true, I wouldn't have had any trouble. But the combination of all four of them meant that I was getting proper segfault-death crashes.

I blame Apple. Who removes instructions from a processor within the same family‽ (I'm sure that in reality there's probably some important reason for it that's beyond my ken, but still!)

#note #apple #programming #computers #technology #docker #firstup #job #work #employment #java

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2025/07/16/m4-colima-sve-headaches/

Off to my first day at Firstup. Gotta have an induction: get my ID badge, learn where the toilets are, how to refill the coffee machine, and all that jazz.

Except, of course, none of those steps will be part of my induction. Because, yet again, I've taken a remote-first position. I'm 100% sold that, for me, remote/distributed work helps me bring my most-productive self. It might not be for everybody, but it's great for me.

And now: I'm going to find out where the water cooler is. No, wait... some other thing!

#note #firstup #work #job #employment #telecommuting #teleworking

Via: 🔗 https://danq.me/2025/07/14/firstup-day-1/

"[Shane] Jones said his plan was to marginalise 'the gatekeepers hiding behind the Wildlife Act, the people trying to turn DOC into some sort of preservationist state and deny New Zealand as a livelihood'."

#FirstUp, 2025

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/540529/stewardship-land-as-important-to-preserve-as-doc-land-forest-and-bird

Oh believe me Shame, we'll be lying in front of the bulldozers if it comes to that, not hiding behind them. You don't seem to understand how environmental law protects you and your ecocidal bankrollers from us, not the other way around.

#conservation