mfolaron's comments

mfolaron | 3 months ago | on: Show HN: CoChat – Group chats with multi-model AI, built on OpenWebUI

Thanks. OpenWebUI provides the basic foundation for chatting with AIs.

We updated the regular chat to allow participant invitation and real-time group chat via sockets. We spent a lot of time adjusting system prompts and message meta data to ensure the LLM knows about individual participants at any given time.

We also made a ton of small adjustments to model selectors, tagging of users vs AI, tool execution (in particular web search) and chat controls.

mfolaron | 8 years ago | on: Distributed Performance Testing in the Cloud with JMeter and AWS

>Incorrect with VPC..

VPCs won't work for multi region penetration tests. As far as I remember subnets cannot span multiple availability zones. I should have probably mentioned that.

>Also, could we stop using the term 'slave' to refer to distributed compute or storage nodes?

That I can't argue with...

mfolaron | 10 years ago | on: How to solve a problem like a software developer

I believe that people tend to jump into "solution-mode" too fast. I think it is important to do the proper research before junpung to false conclusions. It is often times not about the solution but the environment the solution lives in. This us what I tried to bring across in the article.

mfolaron | 10 years ago | on: Is Software Art or Engineering? (1999)

I little bit ago I wrote an article on that topic, here are my two words (would love to reignite the discussion) [...]

The definition of Engineering as Wikipedia defines it:

Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials, and processes.

So based on these words the case is quite clear. Software development is engineering. We apply practical knowledge to invent, build, maintain, research, improve structures, machines, devices systems and processes. Our software applications.

The definition of Art as Wikipedia defines it:

Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill. In their most general form, these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art. [..] Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential

So again, we could say Software development is a product of an activity involving imaginative AND technical skills where the practical considerations of use are essential. Is software development part of the decorative/visual arts?

In terms of art and by drawing the parallel to Architecture we could assume that a software developer has enough freedom to choose from a variety of foundations, building blocks. Developers influence the "Gestalt" of the final product and no two systems will look the same. Software development can be considered a unique form of art with intricate nuances that follow simple concepts we find in engineering. [...]

The full article is at: http://www.artofsoftwaredevelopment.com/art-or-engineering/i... (I'm not sure if posting the link is appropriate, please let me know and I'll take it out.)

mfolaron | 10 years ago | on: What Is Good Web Application Architecture?

No, REST works with many data types but JSON has established itself as a de-facto standard when it comes to web API communication. Many frameworks (especially javascript frameworks) handle JSON object very well (in fact a JSON object is a valid data structure in Javascript)
page 1