This blog is going through a few changes.
I have been thinking about writing this for a while. Reading my blogs from this year, you must have seen a shift in content. Most of the writeups are not about the how-tos and whats of technology but mostly my opinions about it. Most of my energy went to communicating my feelings and understanding working with AI. I do not want to make this blog all about AI, but currently that is what I spend most of my time with.
I started this blog in 2023 with the goal of documenting my own learning and producing technical writeups to help others. I was inspired by a lot of blogs from the 2010s when I learned programming. I used to read a lot of blogs because a lot of official documentation was a bit much for my newbie brain.
That is what blogs are great for: distilling dense information and presenting it in a more digestible format. This is gen AI’s best use case. Not only can it distill information, but also break down a segment of a large document. In my opinion, doing the same manually is not a good use of this blog.
Regarding learning, I have created a new workflow. I have always preferred HTML docs over markdown notes. HTML is more readable and you can create segments, flash cards, and highlighted areas in a cleaner way than MD files. The only caveat of maintaining a repository of HTML docs is that HTML is terrible to write. MD is a nice compromise because it is okay to read and amazing to write.
But AI has solved that problem too. I can write raw notes while I am learning and then feed them to AI to generate neat HTML files with the exact layout needed to learn. This is further automated by adding a skill in Claude with tailor-made instructions to keep the consistency of all notes as well as use layout and design to suit my specific needs. I will write a separate blog on Agent Skills to expand on this. I maintain this repo separately and all my notes can be accessed at here.
What happens to this site? What is the best use of this blog? Well, AI at this time generates more than half of internet blogs. According to a recent study by Graphite, more than 50% of articles on the web are now generated by AI, a trend captured in detail by The Conversation. At this point of time, having your own voice is extremely important. I want to use this platform to do just that, something you have seen this year with my critiques and praise of Gen AI, LLM, and software engineering. I will keep talking about technologies but will also add more to the mix. I also have a few interesting historical facts and ideas discussed elsewhere. This keeps my head clear. I will use this blog as an open journal.
This is also something I think I will lose if I keep writing technical how-tos: my own way of thinking and writing. How-tos are extremely easy to generate from AI, but your own thought process is not. ChatGPT can write a 1000-word article on neural networks, but struggles writing how NLP changed my mind about the capabilities of language, precisely how I want.
Use of AI: yes, this blog will have light editing by AI, but the words will be my own. So expect incoherent tangents.
I am excited for this new phase of this blog and I am sure you are too. See you next time.