iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Agentic coding is undeniably very useful. It's also very bad. I compiled a list of what I think is wrong with it: four problems with no solution in sight. Or, as I call them, the four horsemen of agentic coding. ⬇️

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

alright new post goes live next week. it'll be about everything I think is wrong with agentic coding

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Forgot to mention but Chatting Alone got an honorable mention in Adam Mastroianni's annual blog competition! Adam is brilliant and his own writing is outrageously good, so you can imagine how huge this is for me ❤️

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Elixir is on the HN front page, but for a sad reason news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4953...

news.ycombinator.com

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

We should just add new Unicode characters for Claudisms

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

We really need to tone down the "developers feel their identity threatened" argument. This is very condescending and borderline bad faith. LLMs have a laundry list of negative effects, we can talk about them for years and won't get even close to identity issues.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Among others, I think there's also an input/output spectrum that people fall onto. You don't want to be at either extreme.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

LLMs might bring a ton of bad ideas to life, sure, but what if they also leave a lot of good ideas starved of effort and ultimately underdeveloped

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

If AI models really _are_ characters/celebrities, there's going to be a constant demand for new ones even if capabilities remain the same. Infinite reality show for tech folks

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

There's this feeling in the air that something has to be done about LLMs but it isn't clear what and on what grounds. Today I explore the frame that LLMs extract value from our shared past and pollute the future. And the past is a natural resource. distantprovince.substack.com/p/the-past-i...

distantprovince.substack.com

The Past Is a Natural Resource

And I fear it might not be renewable

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

New substack post tomorrow, yay! Writing is a horrible activity, absolute torture. I see why people happily outsource to LLMs.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

There is seemingly no way to make logs look good both in dev and prod. This is especially noticeable in libraries, which often choose to simply not log. In my new post I propose a solution and explain why telemetry isn't quite it distantprovince.by/posts/what-d... #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

distantprovince.by

What do we do with logging in libraries? | Alex Martsinovich

Seriously, what do we do?

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Working on (yet another one) blog post about logging and of course @hauleth.dev raised this topic on elixirforum all the way back in 2019 😆

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Reposted by Alex Martsinovich

Hauleth @hauleth.dev · 29/06/2026

Hello #ElixirLang Does anyone look for principal/senior level developer? Either permanent or contract. I have experience in performance optimisations and observability of Elixir and Erlang codebases. CV available at hauleth.dev/cv @sifa.id profile sifa.id/p/hauleth.dev

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

It's only thankless maintenance if it's from Nebraska region of the US, otherwise it's just sparkling resume farming

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

if 100 chrome tabs were a song, what a treat

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

It's amazing how LLM driven development is both good and bad at the same time. I don't see any extreme stance on it winning. We'll have to learn how to use this goddamn tool properly: without frying our brains or slopifying software.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I once again have some extra free time on my hands, so I'm going to dig into why DBConnectionErrors are seemingly never grouped correctly and see how many yaks require shaving. Our first stop is naive `Logger.error` calls. We need to figure out what to do with them!

github.com

Use reports for logging errors by martosaur · Pull Request #768 · elixir-ecto/postgrex

This PR proposes to log error using report format instead of simple string. The change should be transparent, except for those who potentially relied on log message structure. More Context One of t...

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

📡 New Blog Post LLMs looove markdown, but the best chat interfaces go beyond and let models use rich UI elements. In this post I demonstrate one possible way to achieve this: by teaching models to use custom HTML elements. distantprovince.by/posts/teachi...

distantprovince.by

Teaching LLMs new UI tricks | Alex Martsinovich

Going beyond simple Markdown with LiveView, MDEx and custom HTML elements

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I never wrote to my MP before, but if @apenwarr.ca tells me to, I will

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Reposted by Alex Martsinovich

johanna @jola.dev · 25/05/2026

Wrote a bit about why LLM-written text is so painful, even when the content itself is fine, and the importance of using your own voice jola.dev/posts/the-so...

jola.dev

The social contract of writing | jola.dev

About the value of genuine writing in a world being drowned in slop.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

🎉 InstructorLite has passed 50k downloads on Hex! It started as a fork almost 2 years ago and quickly transformed into a full rewrite. I'm very happy that there are people (and companies!) out there who find it useful! #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

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Reposted by Alex Martsinovich

Brian Meeker @brianmeeker.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I dusted off my blog to explain the AI engineering policy I wrote for work. It morphed into more of a rant on the lack of leadership in tech than I intended. Yelling "MOAR AI!" is not leadership and your teams all feel it. brianmeeker.me/2026/05/14/h...

brianmeeker.me

Have a Coherent AI Policy

Yet Another Software Engineer's Blog

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I wrote about model permanence - a very natural but false idea that models exist between conversation turns. distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-a...

distantprovince.substack.com

Chatting Alone

We need to unlearn model permanence

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Reposted by Alex Martsinovich

Hauleth @hauleth.dev · 14/05/2026

Anyone is looking for Senior Elixir Developer based in the EU? My CV available at hauleth.dev/cv #elixirlang #job

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Spot on. I personally employ 2 tricks to ease the pain: 1. Draft PRs. As soon as you're more or less set on the path, push it and request a review. Once there is something tangible on the table, it's much easier to get feedback. This also forces you into iterative approach.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Looking for an #ElixirLang dev? I'm officially on the market! 4+ years of Elixir in production. Natural affinity to testing, o11y and DX. My most used OS libraries are InstructorLite and PostHog SDK. Remote from 🇨🇦, PDT, links in bio. RTs appreciated 🙏 #MyElixirStatus

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Code reviews are definitely dead and many of us, including myself, are grieving. I don't know how things will turn out, but I felt the need to write a farewell. distantprovince.by/posts/a-fare...

distantprovince.by

A Farewell to Code Reviews | Alex Martsinovich

Code reviews as I remember them are gone

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Working on improving PostHog error tracking for complex OTP errors. Chained exceptions is a fairly good fit. Hopefully will ship soon!

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Maybe AI has made writing code an obsolete skill, but every engineer who plays with coding agents today gained their experience by writing code. To understand the real impact of AI, we'll have to look at a world where engineers _never_ had to write code. distantprovince.by/posts/ai-fut...

distantprovince.by

AI Future Will Be Nothing Like Present | Alex Martsinovich

You and I have no idea what it's like to work with AI

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Handwave 👋 New Hex package that allows you to point in the general direction of desired outcome and let LLM figure it out. Sometimes, you just need a smarter if: #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Patch release 1.1.1 for InstructorLite * Make ChatCompletionsCompatible adapter more forgiving to Mistral's API responses * Fix rare bug when InstructorLite.ask/2 would refuse to call adapter because it wasn't loaded #MyElixirStatus #ElixirLang

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I vibe coded an entirely new PostHog SDK— Actually, no. This summer I locked in, learned what needed to be learned, and built an error tracking library from first principles, that became an official PostHog SDK for Elixir Here's why I think it's good #ElixirLang distantprovince.by/posts/postho...

distantprovince.by

PostHog Elixir SDK is Good | Alex Martsinovich

PostHog Elixir SDK 2.0 is here and it's good

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Reposted by Alex Martsinovich

Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this. #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...

distantprovince.by

5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich

Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this. #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...

distantprovince.by

5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich

Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

If you're a junior engineer, don't ask cheap models for advice. Ask the most senior engineer on the team. The latency is garbage, the personality is questionable, but your employer pays for subscription 💅

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Last week InstructorLite hit 100 stars and 10k downloads on Hex 🎉 Almost a year after its initial release! InstructorLite is the best way to get comfortable with structured outputs before you inevitably transition to raw Req. #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

If food can only be soup, salad or sandwich, then functions can only be pure functions, side-effects or call sites

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

Registry is such a versatile tool. How did we live without it? How do I stop using it for everything?

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I finally updated one of my side projects to Phoenix 1.8 and DaisyUI. Looks much better now. Under the hood it runs ~100k Oban jobs per day and costs less than $5 per month to host. #ElixirLang is truly a miracle tech.

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

I think the question is, does the world need DiscoHog?

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Hmm, so with all my work on LogHog and DiscoLog, I have all building blocks in place to create a bot that will forward Discord gateway events to PostHog 🤔

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

What have I done my silly AI essay is "on HN front page". I don't even know how hacker news work. Should I open comment section?

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Alex Martsinovich @distantprovince.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

A tech lead who I highly respect once told me that in order to get something _really_ right, you need to rewrite the code ~5 times. I think about this often.

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