Latest posts

• Dune (Review)

  I read Dune about a month ago and I kind of forgot to log my impressions. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not a light reading, but it’s really satisfying once you fully immersed on the story. It is the kind of science fiction that I enjoy the most, one that doesn’t stay on the surface and it’s able to build a complex world with intricate philosophical, economic and political analysis. I’m looking forward to continuing this series.

• Fahrenheit 451 (Review)

  I have mixed feelings about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two-thirds, which had an excellent setup and pace. However, the ending felt slow, predictable, and somewhat disjointed, leaving me with a sense of emptiness upon finishing. The premise of a world where books are forbidden seemed like a powerful way to explore the theme of censorship, but it felt diluted into a questionable argument that we should be able to say whatever we want, no matter what, without any consequences. Coming from a white man, the argument that minorities are the main cause of censorship did not sit well with me. Of course, the book cannot be judged solely through today’s lens, and the term ‘minority’ as used in the book may not align with our current understanding. Nevertheless, the epilogue in the edition I read had strong undertones of ‘old man yelling because he can’t say offensive things without consequences.’ And yet, I would still recommend it. I love a well-written dystopia that challenges you to think and is entertaining at the same time."

• Pride and Prejudice (Review)

  It is a novel of manners with elements of romantic comedy. While it wasn’t a book that particularly captivated me, I can appreciate its writing style and the detailed portrayal of the society of that era. That said, by modern standards, the plot feels somewhat clichéd and predictable. However, the reading is quite pleasant, so I would recommend it to someone who enjoys this type of story.

  3 stars

• What I've learned about writing AI apps so far (link)

  Citing Laurie Voss:

  Is what you’re doing taking a large amount of text and asking the LLM to convert it into a smaller amount of text? Then it’s probably going to be great at it. If you’re asking it to convert into a roughly equal amount of text it will be so-so. If you’re asking it to create more text than you gave it, forget about it. The rest of this post is really just examples of this rule in action.

• S3 Tar

  S3 Tar allows to bundle Amazon S3 files in a tarball without the need to download them. I’ve had this precise use case in the past and at the time I had to write a custom script. I’m glad this exists.

• Moving on from React, a Year Later (link)

  Kelly Sutton shares their experience after a year of replacing React with a JavaScript-light approach.

  One of the arguments for a SPA is that it provides a more reactive customer experience. I think that’s mostly debunked at this point, due to the performance creep and complexity that comes in with a more complicated client-server relationship.

  While there are examples of well-built SPAs, the opposite are far more common. On the other hand, traditional server-rendered applications can provide great experiences by taking advantage of platform features like back/forward cache and view transitions. The reality is that most web applications don’t need the added complexity of managing everything with JavaScript. If you are not building something with Figma’s level of complexity, it’s probably not worth it.

• Reckoning: Frontend’s Lost Decade (link)

  Some uncomfortable truths about the state of web develoment. The current generation of JavaScript frameworks tried to overcome the platform limitations by re-implementing everything in a scripting language. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this ended up worsening the experience for users in low resources devices. The web platform has advanced so much in the last decade that it’s a shame that most of the focus hasn’t been put in ways to overcome this limitations. There might be some hope with new frameworks like Astro or Eleventy shipping JavaScript-free experiences by default and even React trying to move more of the work to the server. However, a future where progressive enhancement and taking advantage of the platform is the norm seems distant to me.

• Books I read in 2024

  I read 7 books in 2024. I would have loved to have read much more, but I don’t fell to bad about it –at least I didn’t stop reading this year! All books were fiction and except for one in Spanish the rest were in English. I do feel like I accomplished something here as I’ve being able to read literature in English more easily.

  For the reviews I’m using Goodreads score system. One star is the only score I would considered negative. 3 stars and up are books I would recommend: