The past few months have been hectic. My team at work has evolved from a media and content creation team to developer advocacy team focused on North America. This means that I'll be traveling to conferences and events, spreading the good word of Google Cloud. This didn't mean we were done making content. Our team pushed through the end of the year to make several videos showing the different ways someone might use Duet AI including some videos showing how to get started. So, I decided to take a break from writing about things I was reading and focus on that.

When the new year started, I read some articles and have been planning on writing my first recent readings post of the year. Then came the planning and rehearsing for a Duet AI virtual event on the 24th of January that took up all my brain space for a few weeks. I'm proud of the work Chloe Condon and I put into that, so check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

The recent readings for this article, are all (mostly) tech related but look for some more varied content soon. There are some interesting articles I've added to my queue. With no further gilding the lily, and without any more ado; here are my recent readings:

• LLMs and Programming in the first days of 2024 - We are at an exciting time with LLMs and the AI that uses them. Now that the hype of 2023 showing that there are tools and models to be used, now the question is, "What do we do with this?" This article answers with some poetic descriptions of LLM based AI.

  ... if this erudite fool is at our disposal and answers all the questions asked of them, things change. Current LLMs will not take us beyond the paths of knowledge, but if we want to tackle a topic we do not know well, they can often lift us from our absolute ignorance to the point where we know enough to move forward on our own.

• The myth that remote work stifles innovation and creativity is gaining ground–but the same evidence shows that it was only true in the pre-2010s workplace - The philosophical arguments between remote work and return to office mandates will probably still be going on for a while. The more we look at the data, though, the more we see the patterns are different now that we live in a technically more advanced world than we did just a decade and a half ago. Many of the things that used to be the Truth then are misinformation now.
• Ditch ‘UX’, it’s time for Product Experiences. - This article starts out with, "UX is dead, and that's great news!" which is probably more click bait than actual substance for this article. However, what this article does cover is the relationship between UX designers and Developers. Perhaps my career path, that started working in a design heavy agency, had me understand the importance of this partnership, but I really loved what this article was saying. It covers what both designers and developers need to understand about the other role to create a great experience for users and for the people working on a project.
• The 9 Principles of Better Stories - As someone who has been a songwriter, a professional wrestler, and an improviser; I understand the power of good storytelling. In fact, as a developer advocate I think this will be very important to help communicate between developers and the teams making the products they use. This was less of an article and more of a static site designed to help you understand the basics of good storytelling. So, take look and learn more about the 9 principles to improve your communication in business and life.
• The End of Front-End Development - Here's another article with a bit of a click bait title, but it does so to tell a good story. 2023 saw so much hype around AI that some front end developers are worried it will make them obsolete. At this point I don't see that happening, and neither does the author of this article. What we both see are ways in which AI is going to make the quality of our life as we work, much better.
• CSS :has() pseudo class - As someone who has wanted this on many projects, only to find I couldn't count on it being in major browsers, CSS can now confidently use the :has() pseudo class. Instead of just using selectors based on what you are a child of, now you can make selectors that see what children they have.
• Waymo’s driverless cars are finally ready for the highway - The Verge - One of my fears in life is actually cars. Because of this, I have been really watching the various brands of driverless vehicle technology with excitement. Though my employment may be making me biased, the articles I read tend to have me follow Waymo with the most excitement. They've been the most conservative when it comes to putting the tech on the road with real passengers and this has lead to a very good track record of safety. The fact that they feel confident having driverless rides that will go on the freeway is a very good sign. Now, if we could only get them in Seattle.
• Attacks on machine learning models - LLMs and the AI that uses them are very cool. But, like any new technology, they are also a new attack vector, or rather have two attack vectors. Like other software there are code vulnerabilities but the data behind the models can also be attacked. I find security related articles fascinating because you almost have to think entirely different than a dev to see vulnerabilities. Yet another reason LLMs and AI are tools that humans need to use as tools with the understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
• How to get 💩 done as a software engineer - Yes, that's an emoji in the title. With all productivity books and article you have to read them not as the truth, but as possibly useful and may need some tweaking. As someone who is neurodivergent, many of these tips and tricks are not solutions for me. So have a look at this article. Remove the measures he has, except as comparison to see what could work for you, and if anything sounds like it is worth a try, go right ahead.