What software engineers bring to AI-assisted software development LLMs don’t mean the end of software engineering as a profession.
Why tech companies encourage their software engineers to use LLMs It's not news that many tech companies are encouraging or even requiring use of LLM coding tools like Claude Code. While reading Sean Goedecke's post about bad code at big companies, it occurred to me that tech companies are happy to have their software engineers use …
Streamlining my user-level CLAUDE.md This post follows up on my post about getting good results from Claude Code. I've recently streamlined my ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md based on: * Informal observations about what Claude does and doesn't do well * A desire to avoid conflicting with principles that seem to be built into …
Getting Good Results from Claude Code: Writing Good Prompts Key to getting good results from Claude Code (and similar LLM programming tools) is writing good prompts. This is one area where your own programming expertise comes into play; you need to use it to provide guidance to the LLM and nudge it in the right direction. Good prompts are …
Give your LLM Coding Tools Their Own Tools Model Context Protocol (MCP) allows LLMs to call "tools" that can do anything: interact with your filesystem, search the Web, hit an external API, or even help guide the LLM through a structured problem-solving process. A single MCP server provides one or more tools; for example, a research …
Getting Good Results from Claude Code An updated version of my user-level CLAUDE.md is featured in this post from December 2, 2025. I've been experimenting with LLM programming agents over the past few months. Claude Code has become my favorite. It is not without issues, but it's allowed me to write …
UMich Google Calendar Updated for Fall 2011 Update: the calendar described in this post is no longer maintained. I have updated my public Google Calendar for the University of Michigan for the fall 2011 semester. Find information about the calendar and how to use it here. …
How Rdio Can Kill Spotify (and vice-versa) A couple cool new subscription music services have recently appeared: Rdio and Spotify. There are a ton of similarities between the two – they offer instant access to a world of music, they have capable mobile apps, and they share a nearly-identical pricing structure. There are several notable differences between them, …
Removing AT&T Mobile Web Bookmark from Android Phones AT&T adds a bunch of software and bookmarks to all the phones it sells. Once you've rooted your Android phone, it's pretty simple to remove most of the provider's crapware. AT&T also adds a "Mobile Web" bookmark to …
Making a Private Gist Public Guide to changing the privacy of a Github Gist: make a private gist public or make a public gist private.
Shooting Concerts with Strobe Lights Many concerts these days - mainly rock/pop shows - rely heavily on strobe lights as part of the experience. Photographing these shows is challenging, even though there's (at times) plenty of light. I ran into this problem at an Ella Riot show at Ann Arbor's …
The Twitter Busyness Average Part of the Project Announcements series. Update: the project described in this post no longer works due to Twitter API changes. At some point last week, I realized that I could measure roughly how busy I was based on the inverse of the frequency of my posts to Twitter. Based …
Find open CAEN computers using your phone Part of the Project Announcements series. Update: the service described in this post is no longer available. Any University of Michigan engineering student is familiar with the process of finding an open CAEN (UM's engineering computer network) computer in the library or other engineering buildings - you walk …
Moving from Wordpress to Jekyll (and a new design) Over the last few months, I got really tired of the old design and terrible performance of this site. A redesign was clearly in order. We use Jekyll at Nutshell, and I've started to like it, so I figured I'd try using it for this site. …
UMich Google Calendar Updated for Winter 2011 Update: the calendar described in this post is no longer maintained. I have updated my public Google Calendar for the University of Michigan for the winter 2011 semester. Find information about the calendar and how to use it here. …
Michigan Asst. AG Shirvell appeared at protest in May to defame Armstrong Photos of Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell harassing University of Michigan Student Assembly president Chris Armstrong at a May 2010 protest.
Datasheet for RadioShack Phototransistor Datasheet and other information for RadioShack phototransistor, part number 276-0145.
Perfect ViewVC On Dreamhost I recently set up an installation of ViewVC on my Dreamhost account. I also found out how to implement a few useful features, and I'm going to share this process here in the hope that you find it useful and in the hope that I can find it …
University of Michigan Google Calendar Part of the Project Announcements series. Update: the calendar described in this post is no longer maintained. I have created a public Google Calendar which mirrors the University of Michigan's academic calendar. The page for the project, including details on using the calendar, is here: UM Academic Calendar. …
Very Simple Dynamic DNS Client I have recently found a need for a Dynamic DNS client for my desktop. This, based on a script from Jeremy Zawodny, is what I've come up with: {% highlight bash %} !/bin/bash T_USER=TWITTER_USER T_PASS=TWITTER_PASSWORD T_URL=http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml …
↗ Singletons are Pathological Liars Singletons are Pathological Liars "How in the world did the test cause an actual charge on my credit card? … That is 'Spooky action at a distance!''" ↗ archive.org/…/misko.hevery.co