I have been using AI to help with coding for about a year now. I started small: adding documentation to existing code, converting formats, then experimenting with simple programs. Baby steps. Now I am confident using Claude Code to develop significant pieces of work, and along the way I have settled on a five-step procedure that gives consistently good results.
(more…)Posts Tagged ‘ChatGPT’
My 5 step process for working with Claude Code
Posted in Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, ChatGPT, Coding, llm, Technology on October 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The Hidden Economics of AI: Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Posted in Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, ChatGPT, llm, slm, Technology on October 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
We’re having great results from the Chatbase chat engine on fintechbenchmark.com. But we have to look ahead, and smaller models have caught our attention.
For years the industry assumed bigger was always better, with companies building ever-larger data centres to house models with trillions of parameters. But a shift is under way towards smaller, more efficient models, and for good reason.
(more…)The Joy of Prompt Caching
Posted in Still-coding, tagged ai, artificial-intelligence, ChatGPT, llm, Technology on August 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Our website fintechbenchmark.com is a large directory of fintech products and services. The information on the site was seeded from the internet, and in this dynamic industry things change. To keep it current, we run an agent whose job is to keep the site up to date. It runs overnight, processing a batch of companies and their products, using AI to check that the information is accurate — and updating the site when things have changed.
(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
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…)AI to the rescue – Part 2.
Posted in Database Management Systems, Still-coding, Technology, tagged ai, ChatGPT, Database, Gemini, JSON Schema, programming, SQL on January 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In a previous post I showed how an AI system (ChatGPT) was an easy way of converting an SQL Schema to a JSON-Schema. It was very successful and could save hours of donkey-work when dealing with a legacy database. I am coding in TypeScript so I asked for a TypeScript schema as well. It also did that perfectly.
I asked Gemini to do the same job.
(more…)
