Blogging as personal training?
Just as we need regular physical training to keep from physical decline, we also need regular training in our daily work. In this post, I reflect on the parallels between physical training and work training, resolving to find a regular rhythm for daily reflection and experimentation about work issues. Read more »
Using long-token contexts to quality check an entire API doc set
One of the advantages of recent Gen AI updates is the massive token input context. When you can pass in an entire set of documentation as an input, you have a much stronger possibility for powerful prompts. In these prompts, the reference docs can serve as a key source of truth. User guide content and drift out of date, but a freshly generated reference doc should be accurate to the code base, for the most part. From this source of truth, you can do all sorts of things, such as identify outdated content in the user guide, see what's new between outputs, get links in your release notes, and more. In this article, I share 8 quality control prompts you can use when passing in your entire reference docs. Read more »
Seeing invisible details and avoiding predictable, conditioned thought (ZAMM series)
In this essay, I explore the idea of seeing the unseen aspects of things. I discuss several authors on this topic: Rob Walker, an art critic; Viktor Shklovsky, Russian formalist literary critic; and Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My main point is to avoid predictable, conditioned thought by pausing to ask questions about our experiences and the environment around us. In a world where prediction algorithms constantly direct us toward the most likely next word, pushing back and embracing creative ways of seeing and interpreting the world can inject new ideas and perspectives in ways that rejuvenate us. Read more »
Automate links in your release notes using AI (prompt engineering)
My previous prompt engineering technique focused on creating release notes using file diffs. In this article, I explain how to use AI to link all the code elements, often referenced in release notes and other documentation, to their appropriate reference page. The technique basically involves providing your reference documentation in HTML form along with instructions to link all the code elements in Markdown syntax. Read more »
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