Tag: ai

Hello World — In Three Days!

21st July 2026

Three days to get Hello World running.

Not because the code was hard — it’s one line of ZX Basic, or a handful of C, but because the *tools* were hard.

New IDE on a new Windows PC. GitBash vs PowerShell fighting over which GCC to use. Vitis installer hanging silently on Ubuntu because `libncurses` wasn’t in the prerequisites list. An AI agent spinning in circles looking for a build output that was right there, just in the wrong directory.

Hello World isn’t a rite of passage you do once. It’s a tool. Every new compiler, every new target, every new IDE — you prove the chain before you write the real code. Debug one thing at a time.

This one ran on a Windows PC, a Linux PC, two different embedded Linux targets with different ARM cores, and CI. Hence three days. … More Hello World — In Three Days!

How’s my sabbatical treating me?

30th December 2023

Ever since 2006, I have wanted to take a sabbatical. I wanted to take some time away from working on schedule-driven projects for my employer and do something for me instead. Why have I only wanted one since 2006? That’s a tale steeped in office politics and tech start-up financial drama. What I wanted to do during my sabbatical has varied, but it has always been more about writing (fact or fiction) or travelling than coding. The travel would have been a tour of India, to catch up with friends I met in Silicon Valley who have returned home. Fictional writing would have been purely for me, a complete shift away from work. Now I finally have the opportunity to take a sabbatical I have decided to try to write a book. … More How’s my sabbatical treating me?