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My approach for using LLMs to assist in development

I’m an AI skeptic who still uses LLMs daily for development work. Here’s the workflow I’ve developed to get real value from these tools without falling into the trap of letting them do my thinking for me.

Setting up logical replication with Postgres

Getting data out of your Postgres database and into a different data store, like BigQuery or Redshift, is easy with logical replication. This guide shows you how.

Managing activity in a Postgres database

When applications reach a certain scale, the database quickly becomes a non-negotiable consideration. Strange issues start to appear when storing millions of records and processing thousands of transactions per second. This post offers a few quick pointers for addressing issues as they arise.

Efficiently backfilling data in Postgres

While a rake task or background job works fine for most data imports, they become prohibitively slow when dealing with millions of rows. PostgreSQL’s \copy command can handle these large datasets orders of magnitude faster than application-level approaches.

Improving Your Development Cycle with REPLs

Iterate faster by using vim, tmux, and vim-slime to write and debug your code in a Read, Eval, Print Loop (REPL).

Evaluation of Shape Up

I read the book Shape Up by Ryan Singer, taking extensive notes about the methodology and assessing its viability for adoption by product teams.

Claude 3 Released

Claude 3 is impressive in a lot of ways, and I enjoyed experimenting with it. The latest release has shown some interesting capabilities and tendencies, which I explore in this post.

A Useful Heuristic for Evaluating Learning

A personal reflection on how I stopped caring about traditional metrics like grades and started prioritizing personal growth through challenging experiences.

Polymorphic Relationships in ActiveRecord

Discover how polymorphic relationships in ActiveRecord can elegantly separate billing accounts from collaborative groups - a practical guide based on real-world implementation.