I’ve written before about my reservations with Git. This is the story of how those reservations played out in practice — and what I should have done differently.
(more…)Archive for the ‘Still-coding’ Category
Git: A Practical Lesson in Getting It Wrong
Posted in Still-coding, Technology, tagged devops, GIT, Technology on March 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
What happened to backward compatibility
Posted in Still-coding, Technology, tagged Technology on March 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »
This week at the bridge club we had a minor crisis. We have a system for collecting scores each round and feeding them into a computer, which then produces the rankings. This week it lost both — the scores and, more importantly, the rankings. I say “more importantly” because we came top. Others may be less exercised about this.
As the club techie, it fell to me to sort it out. The results collection system works like this: small gadgets sit on each table for entering scores, these communicate wirelessly with a dedicated server, which is linked to a PC. A program talks to the server and creates a results file on the PC. So that file was the obvious first port of call.
(more…)Writing Code from Scratch with Claude Code
Posted in ai, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, Claude code, llm, Technology on March 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »
In my last post, I asked Claude Code to modify an existing program. This time, I had it write one from scratch.
(more…)Claude Code, Cowork, and a Codex Correction
Posted in ai, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, Claude, Claude code, Claude Cowork, Codex, llm, Technology on March 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Since my last post I’ve been using Claude Code more, and I’m pleased to report it works well and is genuinely powerful. As a confirmed control freak, I was also pleased to find that I stayed in control throughout.
(more…)Antigravity or Chrome code?
Posted in ai, Still-coding, tagged ai, Antigravity, artificial-intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, Claude code, Coding risk management, Gemini, llm, OpenAI, Technology on March 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »
After spending a year building fintechbenchmark.com the traditional way—writing code, testing it, iterating—I’d grown comfortable with GitHub Copilot as my AI assistant. It delivered a significant productivity boost, though I’d learned when to trust it and when to ignore its suggestions and push forward on my own.
Then, weeks before our soft launch, our lead contractor dropped a demo of Google Antigravity (Project IDX) that made our entire workflow look like stone tools and campfire stories.
(more…)Structured Outputs: The JSON-Only Revolution
Posted in ai, Fintech, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, json, llm, OpenAI, Technology on February 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »
When I was seeding the database for fintechbenchmark.com with Claude-generated or Openai-generated content, I needed structured data that matched my database schema. My format of choice was JSON, and my approach was straightforward:
- Request JSON in the prompt
- Provide an example of the desired structure
- Parse Claude’s response—a text string containing JSON wrapped in markdown code blocks with triple backticks
What is MCP and why is it important
Posted in ai, Database Management Systems, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, Database, Fintech, llm, MCP, Technology on February 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »
MCP (Model Context Protocol) solves a fundamental problem: how do you give an AI model access to external data like databases, files, or APIs without embedding everything in each request? Introduced by Anthropic in November 2024, MCP is now mature enough (15+ months old) for serious production use. Think of it like a USB-C port for AI—a standardized way to connect AI models to external systems.
(more…)How We Added AI Search to Our Fintech Directory (And What We Learned)
Posted in ai, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, Chatbase, Chatbot, ChatGPT, llm, Technology on January 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »
When we planned fintechbenchmark.com (currently in beta), we realized that AI wasn’t optional—it was essential. We could either embrace this revolution or watch competitors leave us behind.
We faced a classic startup dilemma: build a custom AI solution (expensive and slow) or use an off-the-shelf product to launch quickly and learn what our visitors actually need. We chose the pragmatic route.
(more…)Why SVN Still Makes Sense for Most Development Teams
Posted in History, Still-coding, tagged ai, devops, GIT, GITHUB, Source control, Subversion, SVN, Technology on December 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »
After retiring 15 years ago from professional software development, I had a clear picture of what source control should provide for a commercial development team:
- Prevention of simultaneous edits – avoiding the chaos when two developers unknowingly work on identical code
- Real-time visibility into who’s currently working on what files
- Version metadata embedded in code files – a lifesaver when you find a piece of code and need to know what version it is
- A comprehensive audit trail showing who modified which files and when
- Automatic version incrementing for every modification
- A single authoritative codebase representing the current production state
- The ability to roll back to any previous version
When a business opportunity pulled me out of retirement and back into managing a development team, I naturally asked about source control. The universal response? “We use Git.”
(more…)Converting a database from CouchDB to Mongodb
Posted in Database Management Systems, Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, CouchDB, MongoDB, node.js, NOSQL, programming, SQL, Technology, typescript on August 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »
When I began the project I am currently working on (more details will be provided next month – probably), it was initially intended as a small test to determine the capabilities of AI. Over the last six months it has turned into something that we might take further.
But I hit a problem. As a little hobby project I chose the database I really really like – CouchBD. CouchDB is elegant, simple yet very functional and efficient. Close to the perfect database management system (DBMS). But to take it further I need to involve other developers and it turs out that CouchDB skills are few and far between. Truly it is the Betamax of DBMSs.
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Bob Browning's blog 