Miscellaneous AI-related questions

No answers. "Just", questions I'm aware of and considering:

• If working with AI means communicating with machines more like we do with other humans, how do we avoid things also going back the other way and treating people more like machines?
• Are "agents the future of [all] work"? And, if not all, how to identify the work that can change or be replaced?
• If "AI is only as good as your data", why isn't there as much effort being put into ensuring the quality and accuracy of the data as there is hype about AI?
• At what point does AI not need human oversight? All the education highlights human oversight, but the futurists don't include it...
• What is in the middle-ground between traditional GUIs and "just" a text box?
• As feedback is highlighted as being essential when developing tools with AI, is there a way for feedback from a tool to be passed back to those creating the underlying models?
• If there's a GUI for something, does it automatically need (and benefit?) from having an equivalent interface that's accessible via command line, API, and Agent/MCP?
• As speed/rate of change is a common complaint among all types of people and people doing disparate tasks, how do you factor this in when introducing AI-powered tools?
• If people are generally reluctant to read instructions, why will they happily read the text-based response from an AI tool telling them how to do something?
• Asking good questions is hard. How people ask questions of AI-powered tools greatly impacts the quality of results. In training people to use AI, are they also being taught to ask good questions?

Windows Apps London (formerly Windows Phone User Group) - it was good while it lasted

TLDR: User groups were great. I miss organising and going to them. Maybe I should revisit my plans about this...

I've organized over 100 user group events / meetups. I've also attended and spoken at many others.

The one I had the most to do with was the Windows Phone User Group, which later evolved/became Windows Apps London.

I "ran" this for as long as it existed. It all seems a very long time ago, but as I finish shutting up the virtual shop on the group (Stop paying for things--like domains--that I really don't need and no one looks at) I wanted to take a moment to reflect.

Here are a few of many pieces of similar feedback.

“Great to hear dev thoughts & experiences & see some interesting apps demo’ed”

“Met lots of cool people, and was well worth the trip.”

“Great bunch of people. Lots of enthusiasm and the usual witty banter”

“Meeting was great – fantastic bunch of WP7 developers, designers and officianados!”

“I really enjoyed everyone’s demos; even the games, which is not my domain, provided some interesting info about phone dev.”

“Thanks very much for putting on the event. I found it really useful as well as wonderfully motivating.”

“A great opportunity to meet and socialise with other developers.”

“We had a great time, really informative stuff, we learnt several things both from the talks and from general networking that we’re going to apply to our current and forthcoming projects.”

“Really appreciate the effort put into the event, great to meet everyone”

“It was great being able to network with intellectual individuals”

“It was really awesome. I now have the knowledge to create a better app.”

“It was very informative and enjoyable”

“Fantastic group. Always learn new things and pick up information”

“I like the format where someone knowledgeable us something we didn’t know already”

“One of the most interesting meetings I’ve been to”

“Wealth of knowledge to gain, recommended this to all developers”

“Good format, very useful.”

“Great event! Enjoyed the learning and the interaction with the other participants.”

“Thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Learnt a lot and looking forward to the next one.”

“Lots of fun, excellent talk and great people”

“I think this is a great event necessary for the platform. The atmosphere was good and enabling for sharing ideas.”

“Entertaining and inspiring talk”

“Really enjoyed the format! Great to hear everyone’s thoughts.”

“My mind is pretty blown away right now, very interesting evening with so much to takeaway and think about”

“Probably one of the best groups. Each meeting is useful for learning new things and getting a different point of view”

“Would love to see some more of these events”

“Fantastic presentation. Really helpful to pick up new tips.”

“Interesting conversation was flowing freely around the table. A really good night.”

“Great food, company, conversation and laughs!”

I couldn't let all the history of something that was a big part of my life for a very long time go away completely, so I've created an archive of the website at https://mrlacey.github.io/winappsldn/
Not that I really expect this to be of much interest or use to anyone any more, but it felt too important (to me) to let it go away completely.

Why developers should be excited about implementing migrations

I often hear that developers aren't keen on doing work to upgrade the frameworks/platforms/tools that they use (or the software they're building is using). It's not writing code, and so it's not considered "real development" work.

I think that doing the work to support upgrades or migrations is one of the most important and valuable things a developer can do:

• It's often a simple way to fix potential security vulnerabilities.
• It normally brings performance improvements.
• Updates bring new capabilities and options for things to add to the software.
• Keeping up with the latest versions makes future updates/migrations easier.
• It can help you learn and get hands-on experience with the latest technologies.
• It can allow you to see a large part of or various/obscure parts of the code base, helping you to learn more about the code you're working on.
• It can make it easier for other developers in the team.

So, a high-impact task that helps you learn while supporting the team by doing things they don't want to do? Sounds like a great thing to prioritise if you get the chance.

How quickly can a Windows application launch?

Following on from my recent post asking How much does start-up time matter when choosing a framework? I've now published some figures and the code I used.

With some minor tweaks, I now have an updated graph of the data:

This graph is based on the release builds of the simplest, most minimal apps I could reasonably come up with that were as close to identical in all frameworks.

The code and more details can be found at https://github.com/mrlacey/WinAppLaunchCompare

From that repo:

Miscellaneous observations:

• As expected, WinForms was super fast.
• WPF (both .NET and Framework versions) was surprisingly (disappointingly) slow.
• The difference between MAUI and WinUI is surprising given MAUI uses WinUI to create the Windows version of apps. I expected these to be closer.
• Of the cross-platform options (and WinUI) the difference is basically irrelevant. Having clicked the button to launch the apps many, many times, I didn't perceive any real difference, never feeling that one was slow or faster than the others.

My takeaways:

• For choosing a cross-platform framework, there's hardly anything in it in terms of the time it takes to launch the apps.
• I wouldn't base a decision to use a particular framework based on these (or similar) tests/results.
• I also looked at the time until the App class was loaded. This varied but didn't seem to be related to the overall time taken.
• Performing tests like these can easily become an infinite rabbit hole. There are always potential tweaks and optimizations that could be done. If you have such an interest, please go ahead.

Feel free to experiment with this code as you wish and suggest any ways it could be improved or anything artificially slowing down a version of an app can be addressed.

What makes a good teacher of technology?

I guess it comes down to different people wanting different things. Or, maybe, I'm looking for different things than the majority of people are looking for.

Being aware that I'm trying to learn a variety of new technologies at the moment, and also writing things to try and find a new way of teaching something I'm very familiar with.

Here's what I've seen a lot lately:

Teachers (either qualified educational professionals or people whose job it is to teach and are recognised as experts at teaching new technology) will explain that there are different options or ways of doing things, and then say, "I always use X, so you should too."

Is it that the people learning are just looking for a seemingly authoritative answer, and so are happy to use/do X because they've been told that's ok?

Or, is it that explaining the nuanced differences between options and where/why/how you'd use each and what each is intended/best for is much more difficult and so people don't (or can't) try?

Or a combination of the two?

I find it a bit like being told, "There are lots of potential tools in the toolbox, but I always use a hammer, so you should just use a hammer."

Simple answers are attractive, but don't provide the knowledge to know how to use something other than a hammer or even tell when using a hammer is not appropriate.

I want that deeper knowledge.

Maybe others are happy with a simple solution. When their hammer stops working or can't be used, they'll come back with questions about alternatives. 

I prefer to know in advance if I'm going to be using the wrong tool or what the potential negative consequences of what I'm planning will be.

I want all the learning up front. If you're selling education (or views), then holding back some of the knowledge until later has a benefit for you. But, who is the lesson for?