Category: Software development

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Software development

GitHub Copilot recent experience

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We have using GitHub Copilot probably for 2 years now. First used as a tool for code view, and then expanded as plug-in inside the IDE (both IntelliJ and VS Code). We can ask all kinds of questions in the conversation dialog. Personally I used it to generate unit test code a few months ago.

While the tool is helpful both in code review and in software (or application) development in general, recently I also noticed two issues, both are annoying. And it seems the issues are somewhat related to what Martin Fowler said in his recent blog post “I don’t like LLMs“.

Issue one: it gave totally irrelevant code review comments. I don’t know where the comments originated from, but the tone it used again reminds me of the Mr. Fowler’s post. For me the only solution is add my comments in the Copilot code review comments and move on. It’s not the only time Copilot code review provided this kind of comments. The overall tone from Copilot is

Issue two: this one honestly stumbled upon me, and took me a while to understand the rationale of Copilot’s mistake. I asked Copilot to fix an issue of “unnecessary mockito stubbing” during unit testing. Note the code was generated by Copilot, and what it does was: to remove 2 lines of code which is not supposed to remove, while the correct solution is to remove the same 2 lines of code in a similar function. The main difference between the 2 functions here is one fucntion is with togglz off, while the other is with togglz on. It kept doing that for a few times, until I realized I can manually do it by removing those two lines in the correct function. I think in this case Copilot still is helpful to me – but this small incident reinforced my thinking of “trust but verify” for AI generated code.

At the same time, I read a bit of “When AI writes almost all code, what happens to software engineering?” (Substack link, I came across it from LinkedIn) by Pragmatic Programmer aka Gergely Orosz. It sounds like he is more bullish on AI or AI generating code. Note the Substack article was written in last Nov or Dec.

Another related observation is, I notice sometimes colleagues would say: let AI do the algorithm or something like that (the implied meaning seems to me is we are not as smart as AI).

One counter argument is: the big tech companies are the ones leading the charge using AI to generating code, but at the same time their code quality sometimes are horrendous, such as the Uber Driver App – e.g., this personal experience I had when I was delivering for Uber Eats.

Last but not least let me share a short talk I came across from my friend and a professor in management science at my alma mater Huazhong University of Science and Technology, as shown below. In Chinese. I assume you can ask ChatGPT or Google Gemini for translations if needed.

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Software development

A reminder to myself: don’t work too hard

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And also pay attention mental health. Personally I felt it’s good for me to walk outside, especially a nature trail, with woods etc.

I came across this article – Indian Man At Oracle Laid Off After 12 Years, Wife’s Emotional Note Viral: “Worked Through Holi, Diwali”. This reminds me of one thing – Over the years I recall I worked twice on Thanksgiving holidays.

Once I was single and really not much complaints, another time … it was probably year 2017, I worked 2 days out of the 4 day Thanksgivings holiday – I was married and have family everything, and I got into a fight with my wife partially due to my work load. I was not in a good mood; and then she told her friend that I was going to China etc. and said that I could do a favor for the friend by bringing stuff from the US to China. I told her that we already agreed that not broadcasting my upcoming China trip to avoid those kind of potential hassles. So I used that as an excuse of being upset: I said to my wife that you were not very considerate, considering that I was working my tail off in last few days. And now you bring in unnecessary/extra task for my China trip.

Looking back this is not a really super important issue (do friends a favor). But working itself has added some pressure to me, and working extra hours and especially during holidays not voluntarily is something I want to stay away from. Because relationship with my wife is much more important than work, at least in theory it is. I think because at that time I was the main breadwinner in the house, my job has some extra pressure. It’s still being that way for the most part, in last 10 years or so, my wife did start working, but I think I am still the main breadwinner. I hope over the time (in the near future) I can have other income in addition to work my 9 to 5 job: I am still working on that aspect too – not blogging for sure. But something else.

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Software development

Two colleagues passed away recently

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One was actually last year, as I recall. But I still remember: it was about a year ago. Today I received another news that one of the colleagues passed away. Note I have worked remotely since pandemic in 2020, and I only saw the second colleague in person a few times. I may have seen the 1st colleague once in office, during one of the few times I visited office – it was probably the Indian holiday of Diwali. I went to the memorial (or visitation, it was a traditional Indian ceremony at a funeral home).

As I wrote this, now I recall another colleague passed away and I went to the memorial (or visitation) too: it was almost 2 years ago – if my memory is correct. That was a hard one because I believe that young colleague likely has depression and although they didn’t explicitly say the cause of death, I can sense it was likely suicide.

PS: I just googled “remote work toll on mental health“.

AI Overview

Remote work can take a significant toll on mental health by substantially increasing isolation, loneliness, and psychological distress, especially for employees who live alone. [1, 2]

Key Mental Health Impacts

  • Isolation and Loneliness: Remote workers spend about 1.1 additional waking hours alone per day compared to on-site workers. Those living alone face an 83% higher chance of experiencing zero human contact during the workday. [1, 2]
  • Rise in Mental Distress: A major study published in Science links remote work to an increase in symptoms of anxiety and depression. It accounts for roughly one-third of the overall rise in national mental distress seen over recent years. [1, 2, 3]
  • Increased Medical Care: Remote employees show higher rates of consulting mental health professionals and using prescription psychiatric medications like antidepressants. [1, 2]
  • Blurred Boundaries and Burnout: Working from home makes it harder to “clock out” mentally. This leads to longer hours, chronic stress, and emotional exhaustion. [1, 2]

PS 2026-9-23 I went to the visitation for the 1st colleague I mentioned. Sadly to learn it was suicide. He is very likely younger than me, single and he left behind his dad, his brother, an aunt and an uncle. The crazy part is he has a few nice used luxury cars and he has will (arrangement) for the cars, for example his aunt will get the Mercedes,

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Software development

History of AI

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history of ai – Google Search

My work at Ascension

I recall I was pulled into evaluation of ambient ambulatory environment (mainly hospital) mainly around voice recognition and recording to EHR/EMR. The vendors I recall: AWS, 3M, Nuance (bought by Microsoft later, news) and Google (actually it’s more like Suki – ai company starts with S – Google Search). Keep in mind at the time, Ascension just signed a work agreement with Google (Google Health and GCP).

My contribution is minimum during the evaluation, but it’s a good opportunity for me to learn the AI mainly around voice recognition and recording in a healthcare setting.

Stocks

SOUN $6.54 (▼3.68%) SoundHound AI Inc | Google Finance

C3.ai: the company claims doing industry (industrial) AI

Recent Development

OpenAI

Anthropic: they had crazy or mind-boggling growth recently.

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Software development

Togglz’s user name is case sensitive

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google search (Togglz user name case sensitive)

Activation Strategies

github

Why is Launch Darkly this expensive? (Launch Darkly is a comparable SaaS product) => Yagni

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Business Investing Software development

Vertical industry software

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or SaaS

CashBoard: quite a while ago, I did a side gig job (year 2012), and I used this app for PDF invoice (professional looking)

ServiceTitan Inc (now a public company TTAN): saw a plumber uses this to generate receipt for me when I paid via CC. Just as I was looking at a possibility to look at buying some of their stocks, I realized they have quite high stock based compensation. ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results (My Q: are they the biggest in the industry?)  

Google Search: “how much of servicetitan’s operating free cash flow is from stock based compensations”

Niche players in their respective markets

Bumped into latter two because my younger daughter does violin and dance.

MyMusicStaff (Teipen Music Academy uses it)

The Studio Director (SLAD uses it)

Other examples of vertical industry software (or SaaS)

Constellation Software (Wikipedia): this is a Canadian conglomerate of vertical software companies. It’s probably the latest of its kind. Its stock is traded at Toronto Stock Exchange.

Personally I worked for companies such as Siemens Digital Industry Software (Wikipedia) and Autodesk, both in the CAD, and related CAM, CAE, PDM/PLM industry.

Categories
Software development

I learned a bit more GitHub Copilot recently

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I worked on a small project (in the Agile or JIRA world, it’s a story), and I experimented Copilot more this time, in fact, I think I tried to use Copilot as much or as practically as possible, for 2 out of the 3 main coding tasks. This is in addition to the Copilot code review feature which I have been using probably for a year now. Back to the coding tasks: refactoring and adding unit tests are the two main tasks that I used Copilot extensively. I also think Copilot did a decent job on bath. The 3rd task, which is to create a controller (an end point), I forgot to try the Copilot – hope I can try something like that down the road.

I used the IntelliJ Ultimate edition for my Java project IDE, and I was familiar with some IDE basic features on refactoring, such as extract methods, or change method signature. This mini project involves moving code from one layer down (from UI to the service layer). Copilot did it in one shot when I asked it to perform the task, from and to, mainly using the correct prompt.

For Unit Testing, I did two things, I changed the mocking framework from EasyMock to Mockito (which is more modern), also I added and cleaned all the unit tests, as much as I can. I admit I am still learning on the unit testing front. Sometimes I felt it’s somewhat like “teach an old dog a new trick”, I mean the “test driven development” or writing a complete unit test suite. But I am getting there: not just on Java, for JavaScript, I had some fun writing Jest test as well. For Java it’s JUnit.

Code review

This is similar as before I worked on this mini project, but I am getting more out of the Copilot code review comments, most of which I think is valid.

On a side note, I did a coding test for this LinkedIn AI trainer gig – not sure that I passed it, as I was not very confident on my Python language. But I still think it’s good exercise for me – I mean the coding test via HackerRank.

Categories
Business Investing Software development

Will many software companies die due to AI?

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Full disclosure: I worked in the software (or IT) industry for last 25+ years ago. I put most of my 401k in the S&P 500 index funds. I also have a little individual stocks in my IRA and brokerage accounts, although comparing to the S&P 500 index fund, and other stock positions such as BRK.B and KO, my software stock holdings are insignificant.

google search for saas apocalypse

Fortune 2026/02/04: $300 Billion Evaporated. The SaaS -Pocalypse Has Begun.

2026-2-26 Yahoo Finance (PitchBook): Q&A: Francisco Partners on the software sell-off

Reddit: The “SaaSpocalypse” is the latest wall street hallucination!

There are tons of YouTube videos on this topic recently. Personally, I think the reality will probably somewhere in between, just like this LinkedIn post.

Recent I wrote this blog post – My dream, software development jobs, and software industry

And just today, CNBC – Moody’s cuts rating on private credit fund run by KKR and Future Standard to junk as bad loans grow; Apollo gives investors only 45% of requested withdrawals from $15 billion private credit fund

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Software development

Learn agentic AI in 30 days and AI coding certifications

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Chatgpt: learn agentic AI in 30 days. I just got started: better late than never. Adapt or become irrelevant (as a coder). I am not sure if the link here will work for everyone, but one can type those words, and Chatgpt will come back with the 30 day plan. I think 30 day is good. One factor that drove me to learn, was I saw requirement for a Senior AI developer position, and the recruiter (whom I had a brief interaction probably 20 years ago) responded, with some AI related questions below (note this is just a subset, she asked some other questions too).

======

Years experience working with AI Tools such as Windsurf and Github Copilot?

Windsurf – a year; GitHub Copilot – 2 years

Windsurf  

AI principles including LLMs, RAG, agents, and prompt engineering

AI Integration into app workflows

Familiarity with AI SDKs and frameworks (e.g., OpenAI SDK, LangChain) is a plus

======

I quickly realized that I need to brush up skills to be relevant to say the least.

The second point, probably more importantly, is I want to be relevant for the upcoming AI tsunami – the agentic AI coding and all. I did start look at it recently, and documented my learning here in a google doc.

Certifications

Thinking it may be useful, or at least helpful if one wants to do more structured learning. Here is the google search.

PS: I gave it a bit more thought on certifications. A few years ago I thought about getting the AWS certifications, probably in 2020 or 2021. I bought the cert prep course at Udemy and eventually didn’t complete the prep and attempt the cert exam. From my personal experience learning CFA many years ago, while the prep process will help me to learn, the cert itself is not going to make huge difference in career – it may still help one to secure an interview or a job. But I think the learning the AI is more important. Again this is because AI is and will have even more impact to our lives or work. If I could use an analogy, in 2008 I had my 1st smartphone (Blackberry), and first iPhone was debuted in 2007, in a few years, iPhone basically defeated Blackberry. I think similar things will happen to coding between AI and human beings. AI (the super computer) will beat us human beings eventually – probably it won’t take long there either.

It doesn’t mean we have to accept the defeat, and find another trade job (electrician, or plumber), but we can still do other parts of the tech job: requirements gathering, supervising AI agents (somewhat like supervise the junior engineers), talk to end users and thinking about the bugs and features, etc.

Categories
Software development

My dream, software development jobs, and software industry

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I sort had a bad dream last night. I dreamed that my old colleague admonished me for not working hard enough. I think perhaps I had too much work-related stress recently.

On a related note, 我感觉AI对大众码工(yours truly included)和大部分软件公司和IT行业的冲击才刚刚开始。。。 大厂已经裁了几轮了。。。Personally I am at peace if I have to drive ride share or food delivery to feed or support my family – I felt I already enjoyed my 25+ years of 码工job，and now it’s probably good for me to do something different 😂

Btw, I could be a little biased (because I have been in the IT/software arena, and on LinkedIn since 2008), but it seems to me there are tsunami of people looking for work now #OpenToWork . The overall situation looks pretty bad. And we know in the USA, the current administration is pretty much hands off to the AI, gen AI etc.

PS: I came across Anil Dash’s article here – What do coders do after AI? I quote some below, as I tend to agree with his assessment. I think he said some of what I wanted to say, and said it much more elegantly.

……But the level at which the change is happening in this transition is one that gets closer to people’s sense of self-worth and identity, rather than to their perceptions of simply having to acquire knowledge or skills. It doesn’t help that the change is being catalyzed by some of the most venal and irresponsible leaders in the history of business, brazenly acting without any moral boundaries whatsoever.…..

……I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the only way forward is for more of the hackers with soul to seize this moment of flux and use these tools to build. The economics of creating code are changing, and it can’t just be the worst billionaires in the world who benefit. The latest count is 700,000 people laid off in the last few years in the tech industry. We’ll be at a million soon, at the rate things are accelerating. Each new layoff announcement is now in the thousands.……

……I’ve spent my whole career working with communities of coders, building tools for the people who build with code. I don’t imagine I’ll ever stop doing it. This is the hardest moment that I’ve ever seen this community go through, and it makes me heartsick to see so many people enduring such stress and anxiety about what’s to come. More than anything else, what I hope people can remember is that all of the great things that people love about technology weren’t created by the money guys, or the bosses who make HR decisions — they were created by the people who actually build things.…..

Also this post on LinkedIn by Laurie Voss, let me quote below as linkedIn post search could be buggy from my observation.

I have always been the kind of developer who only cared about outcomes. Give me the tool, the framework, the head start. I just want my website.

A totally different kind of developer exists who cares about the craft. Getting that function just right. Those devs are in pain right now.

LLM-powered engineering is the ultimate outcome-based method: in the extreme case you ship code you’ve never even read.

This is anathema to those who care about the craft and you can see their cultural convulsions across social media every day. “People aren’t caring AND THEY SHOULD WHAT IS WRONG!?”

I don’t know what’s going to happen to the craftspeople of code. I’m not here to predict their irrelevance, they could end up being the most important people to cultivate in a world where nobody reads code. But I know they’re in pain right now, and my sympathy is with them.

It is a very, very weird time to be a software developer and anybody who tells you they know where this is going is deluded. We have shaken the kaleidoscope as hard as we can and the pattern it will land in is a total unknown.