It’s January 2024 as I write this; I fully expect this post to be out of date by tomorrow, or even sooner. But I think this is exciting!

Running a Large Language Model, or LLM, or AI assistant locally always seemed like something that only the really dedicated hobbyists could do. It seemed to require lots of manual build steps and complicated tinkering to get something working. This is no longer true.

As an individual, it might feel like there’s not much we can do about climate change. As a developer, however, we have options that other people do not have: we’re pushing the buttons (literally and figuratively) behind the scenes of some of the biggest websites in the world. This is where we can make a difference.

Five years ago I was working as a freelance Java Developer in what was the most fun assignment I had had in years. I was approaching the magic age of 40 and thoughts started to pop up in my head about what would be next. I had enjoyed my freedom while being self-employed, but being in the great team that I was, I started to realise I would have to leave them behind eventually. That sparked the idea to look ahead and rethink what the future would look like for me. Looking back, I would have never thought I would be here already, celebrating this major milestone. Before we get to that, let’s move forward from five years ago and build up to it.

(source: Joey Bakker)

Climate change is a thing that affects us all. As developers, we are in a unique position to help do something about this. After all, the whole world runs on computers these days, and computers consume energy. We, developers, program these computers, and the decisions that we make have consequences beyond the business domain we code for. Also, as employed people living in Europe or North-America, we belong to the top 10% of richest people on the planet.

Using your favourite editor in a terminal right from the MacOS Finder is a major speed improvement

If you’re anything like me, you do a lot of editing on the Terminal. However, sometimes I’m browsing a project or some downloaded artifact from Finder. When double-clicking a .md file then proceeds to open XCode, I have this immediate sensation of “Oh no, what have I done!?”. Well, I fixed that.

Are you looking for a way to integrate that “awesome productivity hack” with the rest of your workflow, but just can’t seem to get it right? Have you tried a ton of these timers, apps, websites and whatnot, but they all just feel like another thing to remember or like two (comfy) left shoes? That’s how I felt when I tried to integrate the Pomodoro-technique into my workflow.

I use Slack a lot and I absolutely love it. At some point, I had a trial for a plugin that allows you to work on a task and have your status be set to 🍅 — Until 20:33. This would then also block notifications apart from direct mentions. This was great, but the rest of the integration just didn’t fit. Then I found a great app for my phone, where I could start timers for 25 minutes and then extend it by 5 minutes as needed, or go for a long/short break and then return to the next 25 minutes. Fantastic. It just didn’t integrate with Slack.

The noble art of ASCII-art has moved a bit to the background in the past decade with a few nice exceptions like ASCII movie converters producing magnificent scenes like this one from The Matrix . Also, you can’t really call yourself a geek if you haven’t seen the telnet-powered ASCII art version of Star Wars (just enter telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and sit back).

Luckily, not all is lost. Communicating through written text is still a big part of the software development profession, be it through Slack or commit messages or text-alerts on your phone. Little gems like :) =]:-) :-O \o/ can still be used to add some sentiment to your messages. After all Fixed tests doesn’t make you feel half as much a bad-ass as Fixed tests B-) will.

Are the only sounds on your office floor the random rickety-clicks of your colleagues’ keyboards? Are meetings dull and devoid of humor? Then pick yourself up, find some sound fragments and start bringing a new vibe to your work floor. (And probably annoy the heck out of some of your co-workers 😇)