Obscure projects and AI

I like parts of developing that are not very trendy nowadays. Whatever LLVM I use makes a lot of very basic mistakes, produces slow code, and generally makes code that makes me smile.

I had time for myself for the last two days, and I asked Cursor to count the commas in a string, in C. I know how to do it. That’s one of the code snippets in a “Learn how to program in C in ten lessons”.

And it… looped the string, created another with just commas, and ran strlen. Strange? Python style? And I tried again to ask, and it made a code that incremented a variable, like everybody would do.

Does it not have a billion tokens for talking with me? For giving me hints in the context of my not-trendy projects? Was it I who was not gentle enough to explain my needs well?

I took a Campari with the sound of the Arno river in the background, thinking about the servers on the other side of the ocean that worked for me, producing a bit of heat and noise to suggest that strlen.

You have to enjoy the little things in life. And that drink was just at the right temperature.

Until next time.

@online{zaerl2025-obscure-projects-and-ai,
  author = {Francesco Bigiarini},
  title = {Obscure projects and AI},
  date = {2025-06-15},
  url = {https://zaerl.com/2025/06/15/obscure-projects-and-ai/},
  urldate = {2025-06-15}
}