I’ve had every week off from Swift Package deal Index this week as I wanted to do some work on this article. Curated (the e-mail service I exploit) has had some issues just lately, and I’m investigating what it might take to self-host my e-newsletter once more. It began over 13 years in the past as a easy Jekyll website with an ESP account, and that’s the place I believe it’ll find yourself once more quickly.
You received’t see large adjustments when it transitions again to being self-hosted, so why am I speaking about it? Effectively, it’s been a terrific probability for me to play with a few AI developer instruments that I’ve been which means to take a look at.
First, OpenAI’s new o1-preview mannequin that you simply may need examine. It’s designed for bigger duties that take extra “serious about” earlier than the mannequin provides a response. One of many issues it’s good at is writing code, so I assumed I’d give it the duty of turning the structured JSON export of my Curated knowledge into. I spent about ten minutes writing a reasonably prolonged specification and included a pattern of the JSON knowledge.
It spent about two minutes “pondering” after which produced code for me. It ran first time with out errors and did precisely what I requested it to… which is the place the one flaw was. 😂 I spent one other couple of minutes writing up a bulleted checklist of amendments, clarifications, and additions to my unique spec, and other than one small blip, I had a working program that did what I wanted. It solely took two prompts and fewer than thirty minutes, and the code was higher than I’d have written.
I additionally checked out Cursor this week, as I stated I’d, and it’s good. I’ve extra to write down than what I’ve room for right here, however I can’t go with out mentioning one characteristic that looks like a step ahead for inline completion. All AI code completion I’ve used to this point has been additive, suggesting both a line or block of code. Cursor presents that, in fact, however it may additionally provide to edit different components of a file which may not be a part of the identical contiguous block of code.
I’ll clarify. Think about you’ve got some inline logic in a variable project, and also you resolve that it’s getting too advanced for that line. You may resolve to make a brand new intermediate variable on the road above. Cursor will discover that, and as you declare the brand new variable with partial logic from the road beneath it received’t solely full the road you’re typing, but in addition provide to take away the now duplicate code from its unique location. It might sound easy, however it’s putting when it occurs.
That clarification won’t be tremendous clear, so I made a 20 second demo video which could make clear issues. Cursor carried out that edit in two consecutive presses of Tab, however it may additionally mix two solutions like that into one. I assume if it feels assured sufficient that you simply’d need them each. It’s not 100% clear to me but the way it decides what sort of completion or edit it should counsel, however it acquired it proper again and again as I used it. There’s a free plan that’s greater than able to exhibiting what it may do, so there’s no purpose to not give it a strive in the event you’re on this space.
This characteristic is what felt like an enormous step ahead to me over line-at-a-time and block-of-code solutions. It felt like having true help relatively than completion or era.
I may discuss extra about how Cursor additionally takes benefit of recent LLM fashions having such big context home windows by utilizing all open tabs as context. It might even embrace each file in your repository in the event you select. I’ll depart that for one more time, although. That is already too lengthy.
We reside in fascinating instances.
Dave Verwer 
