Home on 57R1N9p00L

LLMs are a weird thing

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

LLMs are a weird thing. You can love and hate them at the same time. I’ve come to realize that LLMs can indeed be valuable tools, but they also disrupt programming as a craft in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. The real insight isn’t whether LLMs are good or bad. It’s that their value is highly circumstantial and depends entirely on the expertise of the person wielding them.

The Vibe Coding Illusion #

LinkedIn is full of AI advocates and project managers celebrating their vibe-coding successes. One is almost inclined to believe their stories. But very often these people are judging a book by its cover without knowing what is written inside. If software does what you want and you created it via vibe-coding, what’s the complaint?

Debugging OpenSUSE emergency mode - superblock error with Btrfs

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have been using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed as my only OS with the Btrfs file system for a few months now, coming from Ubuntu. While the system generally feels more performant, I sporadically experienced random freezes without any correlation to specific actions. It could happen while working in the IDE, browsing, or writing. Annoying, but manageable. Until yesterday.

The screen froze once again, but this time the system only booted into emergency mode, something I thankfully had no prior experience with.

Reflections on personal Linux Desktop usage and general Linux adaptation

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have been acquainted with the Windows OS since my early computer days. Since then, I used Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7, 10 and 11. Early on, Windows always felt like it was without alternative. Mostly because I might have been not knowledgeable enough to engage with the existing Linux distributions of that time. On the other hand, I had no good reason to abandon Windows or question Windows as my main OS because I was mostly focused on playing certain games.

Kagi - Is it worth paying for a search engine?

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am currently seven month into my Kagi subscription, and it is time for a short review of this rather unusual service. If you have not heard of Kagi, it is a search engine with a subscription model. At Kagi they claim to put you first, since your subscription to the service effectively runs the company. There is no data selling, no data usage, no advertisements, no user-tracking. They only generate turnover with customer payments.

How to load dynamically uploaded images within a Vaadin/Spring Boot app?

Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I was faced with the question on how to efficiently load images in a Vaadin Flow app, that can dynamically be changed by the users. As you might have suspected we are talking about simple user profile pictures. The images are supposed to be held private and only be available for logged-in users. Thus, the means which provide the images are supposed to be under control of the Vaadin session. For loading images Vaadin sources usually present code snippets like the following (Ref):

Setting a global footer on a Vaadin AppLayout

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

More recently I have started using the Vaadin Flow framework in version 24 to build a corporate application. One of the first challenges I stumbled upon when building a user interface was creating a global footer that is simply present on all other views.

The user interface in Vaadin is usually build from the common root AppLayout component which is to be extended from a main view class. This AppLayout provides a few helper methods to fill the predefined content areas for navigation, content and drawer. While e.g. the addToNavBar method can be used to create menus and alike and hence basically defining a navigation header section, there is no dedicated method for a footer.

Should you learn programming in Java?

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Back in the days (1995) Java`s main selling point was its cross-platform capability. Nowadays, many programming languages like Go or Python can match this. The same is true for other features when viewed in isolation. Indeed, it will be hard to find a feature that is unique to Java. But the same is true for many other modern languages. Some might have their strengths in certain areas, and a general decision on what programming language to use is always dependent on what you want to do, on what platform you want to do it and very often it depends on what people before you have been doing.

Automated database cleanup during integration test run with JUnit5 and Spring Boot

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Integration tests are an integral part of software testing, being responsible for joint testing of different parts of the application. Hence, they usually require the application (partially) running with all the attached strings like a database connection. Now, depending on your application, it might be necessary to maintain a clean data sleeve between different integration test classes in oder to reliably and reproducibly test certain behaviours without side effects from residual data. For this, it might come in handy if you simply clean your database e.g. after each test class execution. That is at least my approach to keep my database state known. To achieve this in JUnit5/Spring Boot I do the following:

Nuanced access on DTO attributes in Spring Boot

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When building a REST API with typical CRUD operations you will sooner or later be faced with a situation in which you need to authorize only certain users on certain endpoints. In Spring Boot this can be achieved by utilizing method security features e.g. by using the @PreAuthorize annotation in combination with the in-built hasRole() method which checks for specified roles in Spring`s security context. Although this carries you quite far, it might be necessary to extend this functionality and allow access on certain DTO attributes only to admin users during create or update operations. This could be implemented by additional code in your business logic. I personally prefer a better separation of concern that neither requires changes on the API or on the business logic in such case.

Solving missing network connection with Podman in restrictive corporate VPN

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I had a problem in my professional role. While looking into alternatives to Docker Desktop, I gave Podman a shot and was quite satisfied from the start. Although a few tweaks were necessary to solve the transition from docker-compose the only real issue I had was unfortunately also quite severe. Whenever I turned on my corporate VPN connection it was impossible to get any connection to the internet e.g. to download images.

Some interesting links

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A curated list of interesting links I have stumbled upon.

b3nh0y7 - A personal website by Ben Hoyt, a software developer who writes about the beauty of the “small web”
c45p4rwr3 - Criticism of Google Analytics’ tracking practices with alternative suggestions by Caspar Wrede
h0r57m4nn - Java-related website by Cay S. Horstmann, a fellow Java developer with a lot of content on the matter
r1b053 - An incredible website…handcrafted, full of interesting content biased towards the interests of a molecular biologist
n3u574d7 - Work by Parymal Satyal exploring design, writing, and music; inspired my current web presence
wh3r35y0ur3d - An interesting essay by Ed Zitron about the current state and future of LLMs
1m6_0001 - YouTube compilation of 2009-2012 “Send to YouTube” videos from the iPhone era
573ll1v0r35 - Arxiv research proposing efficient energy-harnessing methods for “Stellivores,” star-consuming civilizations
0umU4MU4 - Nature research demonstrating extrasolar comet Oumuamua’s acceleration resulted from hydrogen gas, not artificial propulsion

About

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Here we go again. After several attempts over the past years to establish a longer-lasting, tiny presence on the web for myself, I landed with yet another idea on how to do it. This time I got inspired by an article I read from Parimal Satyal on “Rediscovering the small web”. Written back in 2020, but only recently read by me, it inspired me to think of the old days, when I got first in touch with the internet and website making.

Cyber security in the post-quantum era

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It is being predicted that quantum computers pose a threat to the security of today’s encryption methods and therefore to the security of digital communication. But how could these potential threats materialize? What is the state of research in the field of post-quantum cryptography and which systems will be affected first? To answer this, we should first take a look at what distinguishes quantum computers from conventional computers and how their huge potential can be explained.

AI Application in Modern Software Development

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Software development is surrounded by a myriad of methods, process models, ecosystems, plugins, languages, architectures, and best practices. On top of that, the entire field is constantly changing: new requirements, new programming languages, new tools. And where can you actually find trained specialists for all these technologies these days? Many factors contribute to the fact that in-house software development can be both expensive and risky.

Depending on the nature of the problem to be solved, there are various approaches. Sometimes it is enough to use purchased software, either on-premise or SaaS, nowadays also often no-code or low-code solutions. For the latter, experience confirms that workload is actually reduced and tasks shift from IT to business departments. This also reduces friction at the interface between IT and business.

Quantum Computing: The Potential of the Second Quantum Revolution

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The topic of quantum computing (QC) has raised great expectations over the years (1), but its commercial use still seems largely limited. However, a closer look reveals that the second quantum revolution, the productive application of quantum mechanical principles in information processing, is already feasible. Google, one of the drivers behind commercially viable quantum computers, demonstrated quantum supremacy for a specific problem in 2019 (2). It is time to examine how insurers, especially those with a high degree of digitalization, could benefit from these new technological possibilities.