-
Building A Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) System To Supplement AI Models
What Is A RAG In AI? Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an AI architecture that combines the best of two worlds, information retrieval and text generation. Instead of relying only on a language model’s pre-trained knowledge (which have firm cutoff dates in the past), or spending the time and resources to train your own models, RAG…
-
My 2025 AI Toolkit & What I’m Actually Using
Now that we’re half way through 2025, I’ve zeroed in on a set of AI tools and platforms that genuinely augment my work and, ones that align with the way I think, learn, and stay in control. Here’s a candid, personal breakdown of what’s working, when I use each tool, and why some just don’t…
-
It’s 2025, Will AI Make Developers Obsolete?
Most of the developers I have known use AI. Some of them use it to build entire apps or to quickly build quick proof-of-concepts. Others refuse to even use it. I’m in the middle myself. I use AI to help move things forward especially when I’m stuck or just want a shortcut through boilerplate, but…
-
Empowering Designers and PMs: Using `contenteditable` and `designMode` to Tweak UIs on the Fly
The contenteditable attribute and designMode property in HTML bring being able to edit any web page like it’s a document without touching design tools or development environment into reality. These become particularly powerful when designers and product managers have the ability to experiment with UI changes live in the browser, iterate with speed, and effectively…
-
Coding With AI
Recently, I set myself a unique challenge: could I build a functional tool over a weekend whenever I had spare time, using only ChatGPT to write the code? Inspired by several similar experiments by my former boss Mark Ruddock and listening to a lot of what Rob Tyrie had to say about the AI space,…
-
On Sub-Second Page Load Times…
When I worked in e-commerce, a big metric of our engineering team was always how long it took for our average user to load our site – not just the HTML, but all assets and for the page to be completely loaded. Other similar considerations included consideration for clutter, image sizes, network traffic back and…
-
Database Design From The Ground Up
At the heart of every software project lies the database—The database is the foundation that determines how data is stored, accessed, and updated in every software project. Whatever your definition of a database may be (Relational, NoSQL, TimeSeries, etc.). Database theory provides the principles for structuring and organizing this data efficiently with one of the…
-
Movies & Work
There’s this quote from a series I watched a long time ago. The main character is put in charge of a company, and he goes through a complicated growth period where he says (and I’m paraphrasing), “It’s my duty to protect the workers and make the right decisions.” That resonated with me a lot. As…
-
What Does Leading A Development Team Mean To Me
The Head of Engineering (VP of Engineering, Director of Engineering, CTO, etc.) is the person in charge of steering the ship, but with a twist—they allow minor direction changes by the team. These slight deviations are fine and can even be beneficial because they offer opportunities for learning and growth, as long as the overall…