Techstructive Weekly #102
Learning the hard rules of life and development, very less reading and watching among the other things learnt in the week from 5th to 11th July 2026
Week #102
I am on a roll here. I have been close to customers and solving some really intricate problems, not deep into code, but deep into understanding the user flow and what kind of specific things they might want to see. Documents are really the back bone of some people’s life and being able to reduce that review time is really a satisfying problem to solve. I need to sink that thing that I just said there. Its hard to compact it further I think. But I have been loving the process of it, not that its a great solution, but being able to come so close that users gets frustrated on how can the system miss it. Its like the last mile changes right. Being in tech teaches you grit and the curiosity is the one that fires to push you through the tough ones.
Anyways. I will be back this weekend for livestreaming. Last week was a bit of rain havoc. Will have some good voice maybe.
This week was a bit of drastic week. I lose one of my mentors at work. He’s still there, but eventually we’ll have to part ways. Its bit hard to digest that. My first mentor in work life, I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Some journeys end, some new begin.
Quote of the Week
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand their shining“
— Anne Lammot in Bird by Bird
I read Bird by bird over the last weeks and wow. I have been blown away with that book. Bird by bird. The book is like that lighthouse for me. It just is there to provide a road to walk on. Like the manager that I had. Feels really sad to say that now.
No words here. You just get it or don’t.
Read
Context switching is so draining. Yes this is a good advice. Honest and really needed for a developer like me.
Its quite hard to review things now. Code can be generated at a whim.
Learn to code is still worth whole
What a beautiful post. The harry potter reference just won my heart. Leviosa and harry you are a wizard, what a beautiful observation.
Programming is like that, you first complain about the nitty-grities then realize, oh go to hell, you are a programmer man! You can create however you want. Building the intuition basically and understanding beyond the code just for fun.
Fun is the part that makes any programmer addicted to it.
Watched
The Primeagen on “I read the code”
This is solid stuff. I read the code. Its feeling like a ancient thing that used to be a myth. Reading code is ok, not like hard and fast rule to necessarily to be a developer. But when you want to prove a thing, and you have read the code, you have some confidence that no other metric or number can give you.
Vibe coding is fine, you don’t have to read the code always especially when performance or quality is not important, if getting the work done is important, which I agree are many things in the world, there vibe coding and blind developing a product or a software is fine. But not always.
Computerphile: Why are tokens expensive
This was a eye opening and a great explanation of how you are billed for each message. Highly recommend people to check and understand to open a new chat if you have been cramping on the same chat for ages.
Not only that becomes less expensive but makes the model a bit more clear on the things, otherwise its like finding a needle in a sand. Context bloat is a thing and so is the model’s ability to understand so many things at once.
Lesson from this, start a new chat if llm is starting to deteriorate and hallucinating. Maybe even before that. I know its tempting to keep the conversation going, the model knows. a lot of things, you feel a resistance to open a new chat and provide all the details again. but that might help you solve the problem more effectively with a fresh perspective otherwise the model will create a mess of the code.
Theo T3: The Grok Model is Good?
This looks absurdly a good model, somehow. Maybe its all cursor magic. But these two companies are really cooking up now.
I regularly use Grok for general search and summarisation things, its really good at that, and its quick too.
Learnt
Small local models are great for some silly automation
https://github.com/openbmb/minicpmDevelopers are still relevant, in fact they are more valuable because the ones who can care and go one mile ahead after vibe coding are the ones that deliver value.
Tech News
X AI releases Grok 4.5: Phew the benchmarks look scary. This is genuinely a good model that doesn’t generate more tokens yet being equally smart. That is a big thing. Cost might be something that labs like Cursor and X AI have just flipped the game maybe.
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That’s it from the 102nd Edition of techstructive weekly. I hope you found it helpful, and relaxing. If not please drop any suggestions, feedback or discussion about certain things you want to in the comments or drop me a message on my socials.
Thank you for reading,
Until next week.
Happy Coding :)