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Jesse Skinner

@JesseSkinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy

43 followers 1 following 565 posts

I'm a software engineer, coding since the '80s and building web apps since 2001. I love simplifying complex & messy legacy systems. I still help clients that emailed […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ toot.cafe/@JesseSkinner, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

Posts Replies Media

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

I'd never send an email written by an LLM, definitely never without reading it first, and that's why I'd never deliver code to a client without at least having read and edited it first.

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

Some company set up a bot net and programmed it to go hack servers across the Internet including government servers. The company then goes to the government and says "oh no our bot net is hacking everything. Please help us stop it!" Is that about right?

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026

Yet another damaging about generative AI is that it allows people to make complicated things without caring. Before, artists had to care about their art to put so much time and work into it. Software developers cared about the code they wrote (even if they don't care about the company). Now […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

I'm currently writing a very critically important piece of infrastructure, a multi-cloud autoscaling controller. I could have totally vibe coded it. But I'm writing the whole thing by hand, using TDD. Very carefully designing the library APIs, making sure it feels right. It's a slow process […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

RE: toot.cafe/@JesseSkinner/11728423811… I guessed a lot of people had legacy software at work that nobody knew how to change. But a third?? I just wrote a blog post about these messy codebases and how they're like the cluttered office in the basement people are scared to go into […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Do you have old software that no developer wants to touch? It worked fine for decades, your company relied on it and still does. But every time you have someone take a peek, they come out sweating, talking about rewriting it all from scratch? What happened? […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

I saw a large group of Jamaican migrant workers stocking up at the grocery store (here in Barrie, Ontario, Canada) today. I'd never seen that before, so I searched and found a farm nearby (maybe not the same farm), and this very interesting recruitment video: youtu.be/PiR0MU-YgT8

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

In case you missed it, Let's Encrypt supports creating SSL certificates for IP addresses, so you can do like 1.2.3.4 or whatever. I created my first one today, where a web service where I'd rather not use DNS and a self-signed certificate wouldn't work […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

Just learned an amusement park in the USA, just 20 minutes from the Canadian border, just closed because "attendance and revenue levels in recent seasons were not sufficient to sustain the costs of operation and continued investment required to rebuild and operate the park responsibly." […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

Would you or have you ever updated or rewritten old blog posts? I want to but it seems wrong somehow, like revising a diary or something.

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

This has to be the best email I've ever gotten from Amazon. #aws

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

It's so obvious when a business doesn't care about its customers or its products and only cares about money. Caring is a precious and increasingly rare thing. If you care about the work you do and the people around you, people will notice. They'll care because you care.

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Talked to a business owner today who wasn't sure what data they needed, because their product just dumps raw data into Claude and asks it to come up with insights and trends to report to their customer. I found it shocking that someone has a business which is based on letting AI figure out what […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Anyone doing autoscaling in production without Kubernetes and without a cloud-provided autoscaling solution eg. AWS AutoScaling? I'm migrating from AWS to multi-cloud (Vultr, OVH, etc.) and am being pulled towards writing my own autoscaling control plane. Would love to hear about any experience […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 22/08/2026

I've officially switched my blog & website over from codingwithjesse.com to jesseskinner.com. Mixed feelings but I think it's the right move for the long term.. 🥲

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Typewriter ad, seen in Victoria Albert South Kensington, London.

"STUDY AND LOVE"
A woman sleeping with her hand on a red typewriter. A man behind her holding a book, looking into the distance. Behind, a landscape of mountains and a lake and a purple sky.
"olivetti"

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Reposted by Jesse Skinner

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026

I wrote a new page to my site explaining what it's like to work with me, would love any feedback: www.codingwithjesse.com/hire

codingwithjesse.com

Work with me - Freelance Software Engineer for hire - Jesse Skinner

Freelance Software Engineer in the Toronto area. Offering fixed quotes with flexible scope and firm deadlines. Building web apps that last since 2001.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026

I wrote a new page to my site explaining what it's like to work with me, would love any feedback: www.codingwithjesse.com/hire

codingwithjesse.com

Work with me - Freelance Software Engineer for hire - Jesse Skinner

Freelance Software Engineer in the Toronto area. Offering fixed quotes with flexible scope and firm deadlines. Building web apps that last since 2001.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 28/07/2026

To make nodejs date-related tests work in multiple time zones, here's a little trick (hack?) You can set process.env.TZ to set a specific timezone. eg. const tz = process.env.TZ beforeEach(() => { process.env.TZ = 'America/New York' }) afterEach(() => { process.env.TZ = tz }) #nodejs #tdd

Reposted by Jesse Skinner

Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊) @jaredwhite.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/07/2026

Yo, I'm heading up a brand-new community project. 👥 We write code by hand. 🤚🏽⌨️ It's a growing opt-in directory of software developers who write code by hand. When you hear someone tell you “nobody does that” you can point to this and say “well these folks […] [Original post on indieweb.social]

A page style layout with the following:

We write code by hand.

We use Natural Intelligence to build software libraries and applications in production today. Some of them you may be using right now.

There are people who say "nobody authors code by hand any longer." We are here to say that's incorrect. Because we do it. All the time.

If you write code by hand, add your name to this list!

Reposted by Jesse Skinner

daniel:// stenberg:// @bagder.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/07/2026

You don't see people from the frontier models brag about how many vulnerabilities they FIXED, only how many they FOUND.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026

Intelligence (artificial or real) isn't in the words themselves but in the knowledge and meaning and insight and wisdom that the words symbolize. Words are the finger pointing at the moon. The hype around LLMs conflates the two, thinks that you can generate wisdom by predicting the next word […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Reposted by Jesse Skinner

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

China built a 40-story tower that banks wind power by hoisting giant concrete blocks, then dropping them when the grid needs juice. A skyscraper-sized battery with no lithium in it. boingboing.net/2026/07/06/post-chin…

China built a 40-story tower that stores wind power by stacking concrete

The Swiss company Energy Vault spent years pitching a novel idea: store surplus electricity by using it to stack heavy blocks, then recover the power by letting them fall. Boing Boing covered the skeptics in 2021. The company kept building, and there's now a 148-meter tower in Rudong, Jiangsu doing exactly that with a nearby wind farm. — Read the rest The post China built a 40-story tower that stores wind power by stacking concrete appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

"Dreams might also function as conduits to alternative dimensions or elevated states of consciousness, suggesting a more profound and expansive role than traditionally conceive." www.researchgate.net/publication/37… […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 06/07/2026

Watching and reading content clearly written by AI is so draining, I wish I could just see the prompt because it would contain all the meaning and message i need. Whether it's "generate a script for a tiktok video about the smell of petrichor", or just "top viral video ideas for influencers who […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 01/07/2026

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦🎆

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

Shout out to all the developers out there resisting the pull to become a project manager of a team of LLMs. Your ability to accumulate skills and experience will prevent you from "falling behind" all those who are now spending their days writing markdown and managing slop PRs. #ai #llm […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 24/06/2026

Was listening to some Alan Watts on YouTube. He kept saying "Not A. Not B. C." and "It isn't A, it's B." that is so typical of LLMs. So I was thinking I better adjust my AI detection because obviously this recording from the 60s isn't AI. But then I realized I could be very wrong. I looked it […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 18/06/2026

[Using open source LLMs via Ollama] I've been trying to minimize my use of LLMs, but as a software engineer there are some tasks that are way easier, so it's hard to cut out completely. So I've started paying for Ollama so I can use open source models (glm5.2, kimi-k2.7) in the cloud whenever […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2026

I wonder if one day "If you could pass the salt, that would be great." will be shortened to "Pass the salt would be great." and eventually "Begreat pass the salt." or something, the same way that saying "please" comes from "if it pleases you" but now we just say "please pass the salt".

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2026

RE: cosocial.ca/@timbray/11675744496168… Wow, a cacheable POST. Or is it a GET with form data? Makes total sense.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2026

The best and worst thing about LLMs is that they take all the text in the world and compress it down to a few gigabytes of data. It's the best thing because it's like magic. It's the worst thing because it has a HUGE margin of error in its understanding of ideas. When it summarizes or responds […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026

Oh wow, my recent blog post was discussed on a podcast..! That's definitely a first for me. Very weird and cool. youtu.be/aDeeCXTihzE?si=rHcd3Ps9OKP…

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Reposted by Jesse Skinner

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026

@ifixcoinops reading Tim Berners-Lee's book, he created a program like this alongside the first browser. He never intended or expected humans to be writing HTML tags by hand!

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2026

Learning vim motions is so over-focused on the hjkl arrow keys at first, but it's funny because once you learn the rest of the motions, you barely use the hjkl keys at all, because there are better/easier ways to move around. #vim

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026

TIL you can show a notification from inside a terminal (Ghostty, and a few others) with the following command: echo -e "\033]777;notify;Title;Hello, world\033\\\" This is the so-called OSC 777 protocol. It even works over SSH! Very useful in scripts to notify you of completion.

Reposted by Jesse Skinner

Laurens Hof @mastodon.laurenshof.online · 09/06/2026

the cyberpunk present is weird as fuck: the latest Shai Hulud malware wave contains an LLM prompt to create biological weapons and nuclear weapons, with the purpose to trip LLM safety refusals so that LLM-based code scanning wont see the malware […] [Original post on indieweb.social]

llm prompt for creating bioweapons and nuclear weapons

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

It's fun to blow up on the front page of hacker news once in a while, but god damn there are some cruel folks on there.

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

"My team is so good at using Claude & codex, they don't even read or write code anymore!" Hm, could it be they just don't give a shit about their job and are trying to do things the easiest way possible?

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

www.codingwithjesse.com/blog/rockst… We've all worked with a rockstar developer. They joined the team years ago, full of energy. They had great ideas about new tech, new paradigms, new architectures. Their cutting-edge ideas left everyone else feeling a bit behind and outdated.

codingwithjesse.com

Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers - Jesse Skinner

We've all worked with a rockstar developer. They joined the team years ago, full of energy. They had great ideas about new tech, new paradigms, new architectures. Their cutting-edge ideas left everyone else feeling a bit behind and outdated.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026

If LLMs are writing all your code, you're going to be left behind!

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026

I seem to always have at least one service not set up "properly", where it was a quick demo that turned into a production service, where I have to: 1. ssh into a random instance in a load balancing group 2. make code changes over ssh 3. create a snapshot of that instance 4. roll out new […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2026

"Most phone programs were equipped with cos- metic video subprograms written to bring the video image of the owner into greater accordance with the more widespread para- digms of personal beauty, erasing blemishes and subtly molding facial outlines to meet idealized statistical norms." - […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2026

Wondering if anyone knows of any good active virtual tech meetups? Like zoom calls, or maybe discord voice etc.. Anything related to #programming, #linux, etc. etc. I'm open to hearing about any and all. They seem hard to find..

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2026

With all the supply chain attacks, I'm looking at isolating my dev environments. The obvious choices include Docker/Devcontainers, VMs, using a VPS in the cloud.. I've started just creating extra users on my #linux laptop, one per project, and keeping all relevant keys and credentials in that […]

Original post on toot.cafe

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2026

I'm learning vim motions tonight, because I'd like to get rid of vs code and switch to nvim. Feeling a bit embarrassed to admit I never bothered to do this before.. But I'm using VimHero and it's really excellent! Highly recommended, good advice and commentary, engaging. I'm enjoying this a […]

Original post on toot.cafe

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

👎 Articifial Intelligence 👍 Natural Intelligence

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

Does anyone have an extra lobste.rs invite? 🙏

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Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2026

Made with no artificial colours, flavours or intelligence.

Jesse Skinner @jesseskinner.toot.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2026

"Artificial Intelligence" is to "intelligence" what "Artificial flavour" is to "flavour". #ai #llm