Forem: Daniel Hodvogner

The IT Team of USS Enterprise

Daniel Hodvogner — Mon, 06 May 2024 07:34:18 +0000

Lately, many software engineers have been concerned about the future with the emergence of new technologies like LLMs. We are both afraid and excited about what lies ahead. I, too, share these feelings, and in this regard, I would like to share my prediction for the future. I was heavily inspired by Dr Matt Welsh's talk at Harvard University, which I recommend watching (link at the end of the article).

Now, let's delve into the heart of the matter: Will AI render our roles obsolete?
In my opinion, not entirely, but it will definitely transform our ways of working. To explore this further, Let's imagine together what the IT Team of the USS Enterprise starship would look like and what their primary function would be.

Engine Room

Starships are just sitting ducks without the hard work of their engineering team. People like Scotty will always be needed to keep the lights up and
the engine going.

So, DevOps teams are here to stay! It doesn't matter where exactly. On-prem, on the cloud? Infrastructure will always need caring, upgrading, and securing. The growing trend of multi-cloud operations and the even higher focus on sustainability in IT will ensure that the DevOps field will thrive.

Bridge

We can argue about who the most essential crew member on the starship is. But very likely, without commanders, no vessel would have made it far in the vast unexplored space. Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock's role is essential to the success and survival of the entire crew. They face life-and-death situations and are required to make split-second decisions.

Translating this to IT terms, this is a new and emerging area and will be the most significant change compared to how we do IT now. We can call them" end users" who are not necessarily technical yet significantly capable of determining the entire project course. Think of them as a mixture of Business Analysts, Designers, and Architects. They will interface with various technologies. Their most important skills will be translating and modelling business needs, prompt engineering, and system-level thinking.

The Computer

This is a little sci-fi in our day and age. The Computer is always used as an interface where the command team gives specific instructions and gets certain inputs. There is little to explain here. LLMs and Machine Learning will be capable of creating on-the-fly "programs" we won't be able to comprehend. And we don't necessarily need to. We can already see the effectiveness of these systems, and I firmly believe that their capabilities will eventually replace conventional software and, unfortunately, most of the traditional software engineers.

Science lab

But! We won't be relying solely on computers! We will need people like Uhura to monitor the system's inputs and outputs. Look for anomalies, distress signals or hidden enemy ships in the cosmos!

Again, to translate this into simple terms, this will also be another new emerging field that is much more technical than the previously mentioned. It will be a sort of code analyst position where we try to evaluate how well or not the AI system works, how the on-the-fly generated programs are performing, whether the data is intact, etc.
I assume this role will need the most hands-on programming experience and a deep understanding of machine learning principles.

Redshirts

There are many hidden threats in the universe! These brave individuals are the first to venture into dangerous territories to protect the entire crew through their jobs.

Security will continue to be a critical aspect for IT teams in the future. In addition to the existing penetration testing methodologies, there will be a new addition to ensure that AI and machine learning models are secured. For example, they can't be misled with techniques like prompt hijacking. The Security teams might also be responsible for enforcing and controlling AI ethics. Yet their primary function will be constantly looking for vulnerabilities in traditional and AI-infused systems.

Sickbay

Let's credit the brave doctors caring for the entire crew. Whether it's a mysterious illness, alien parasites, or just a regular phaser wound, the sickbay and Dr. McCoy are always there to help!

This might not be straightforward, but we must remember that the future IT Team will have human components. We will see the emergence of new functions, such as AI ethics, which try to control how and when AI decision-making can and can't override human ones. And balance the AI-human roles in the entire system, ensuring we stay in control of our fictional starship, not otherwise.

Closing thoughts

Take all this with a grain of salt. No one can predict the future. And the entire world cannot be changed overnight. I'd like to know what you think. How would you imagine the future IT teams and their roles? Is it a grim future or something new or exciting? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Source:

Large Language Models and The End of Programming - CS50 Tech Talk with Dr. Matt Welsh

or

Daniel Hodvogner — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:00:00 +0000

The Biggest Lie In HTML? 👺

I just came by Theo's kinda clickbaity video "The Biggest Lie In HTML".

I recommend watching the video, but here is a TLDW:
HTML standard is "broken", and Svelte and React treat self-closing tags differently. For more details, there is an awesome article by Jake Archibald The case against self-closing tags in HTML

There is no such thing as self-closing ⚠️

First of all, self-closing tags do not exist in HTML. We only have Void elements!

A void element is an element in HTML that cannot have any child nodes (i.e., nested elements or text nodes). Void elements only have a start tag; end tags must not be specified for void elements.

Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Void_element

My thoughts 💭

I'm okay with void elements, mostly because they greatly help readability! For me <br></br> or <img></img> would be strange. So I think the real question is what elements can have children nodes and what not.

Watching the video, I immediately remembered one of the first mistakes I made when learning HTML. At the time, I only had one PHP book and no access to sites like w3School or MDN.

<textarea>
Why does this show up as the value of the textarea?
</textarea>

<input type="text">
And why is this not?
</input>

I think we can argue why <input type="text">value</input> is treated as invalid. I understand the textareas are multi-line, so we need a children text node inside them to have line breaks. But why are inputs - and I mainly talk about text inputs - so different? After all, they also need a way to represent their values!

We could say that input fields are meant to be filled out by the end user, so why would we need to "hardcode" their value into the markup language? But thinking about it, isn’t it the same with textareas?

Inputs are quite strange in general. Why did we jazz up a single element instead of having multiple purposes built?
Speaking of which, why <input type="multi-line"/> is not a thing? I think it would make validation easier, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, what do you think?

<self-close/>
OR
<not-to-self-close></not-to-self-close>

Earth Day Celebration Landing Page submission

Daniel Hodvogner — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 08:25:58 +0000

This is a submission for Frontend Challenge v24.04.17, Glam Up My Markup: Earth Day Celebration Landing Page

What I Built

My main goal was to create an unusual aesthetic. Neo-brutalism, Y2k, and a little bit of Furiger Aero inspired me. I tried to mix and match styles and elements until I found something that I believe is visually appealing.
I mainly used CSS and a little bit of JS. I had to sacrifice a lot of readability, but I think it was worth it.

I hope you like it as well!

Demo

Try it out: https://esyfyi.github.io/2024-earth-day-frontend-challange/

Journey

My process was simple: I went online, looked for inspiration, tried to recreate them, and then mixed and matched until I found something I liked. I also used a lot of clip-paths and CSS filters; I like how the contrasting text interacts with the background illustration.

I used Adobe Firefly to generate the background illustration, and then I separated it into multiple layers using Photoshop.

I had to use requestAnimationFrame to smooth the scrolling animations, as using only the scroll events felt choppy.

Overall, I'm happy with the result, and it was a fun couple of hours.

Sorce code: https://github.com/esyfyi/2024-earth-day-frontend-challange/