Sam Ireland

I make software.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

One thing I’ve always thought Goodreads was missing was a visualisation of the books you’ve read - specifically as a timeline. So I spent last weekend adding that very feature to my own website as a three-track scrollable timeline, and moved my reading history and reviews there.

Quite pleased with how it turned out. Getting the algorithm for positioning the books correctly was a little tricky, to avoid them bunching up in the wrong places, but I think it landed in a good place.

It’s a nice way to record brief thoughts and reflections on books, without needing to write a whole formal blog post about them.

I’ve also experimented with adding a markdown mode, for agents to use with the right HTTP header, though I’m dubious of the use here as they almost never try to do so.

https://t.co/tpzKIGXBgL

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Two years ago I built a system to make myself read more. It worked - 40 books a year. But I haven't read for hours in a long time.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

The costs of systematising a hobby.

https://t.co/n1zCpfuowX

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Third-party libraries are great - once you understand what they do. Before that, they're magic boxes that work until they don't.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

A guide to authentication in django, from the ground up

https://t.co/eZBgGOaUtq

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

I've always wished this existed, and now it does: https://t.co/y1Rvx9xFcn. See what the front page of BBC news looked like at any point in the past* and search for specific headlines.

(*'any point in the past' meaning any time since the archiving started, which is currently yesterday.)

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Getting your data back from Slack - using browser authentication to get a JSON archive of your Slack conversations.

https://t.co/j9ihC0kken

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Yesterday I asked Claude if it knew of any iOS apps to do some specific thing. It started making the iOS app.

[Chris Albon @chrisalbon]

Claude is like “I don’t see a prompt so I’m just going to assume you don’t know wtf you are doing and make you a PowerPoint”

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

I do appreciate Claude's honesty - ChatGPT would never admit this.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

@QuentinCody Interesting - does it get much use?

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

The most interesting problem was schema management - the API has ~100 searchable attributes, each with different valid operators. You can't hard-code them without instantly being out of date, but fetching on import adds latency. Ended up with a cached auto-update approach.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Wrote a Python library for searching the PDB, pdbsearch, and wrote up the process here.

https://t.co/67s7oKEsvh

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

It's really about API design - hiding complexity from users who don't need it while still letting power users access everything. Three layers: simple one-liner search, node helper functions, or full control over the query object.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

A very underrated use of these coding assistants - 'read my docs and check it actually matches how the library works'.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

2025 Book Review

https://t.co/5r07ZZMAkt

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

@adamwathan I would love this, but I worry that it would create selective pressure for hosts to really disguise ad reads as regular content, to fool the AI.

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

How to learn anything by making ChatGPT your perfectly calibrated teacher.

https://t.co/KLYF3HknFK

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

Tiktok has been given a temporary reprieve - if you'd like to use it to archive your liked and saved videos before the end, you may find this useful.

https://t.co/9Q7LJSp7e0

[Sam Ireland @samirelanduk]

My top ten books of 2024.

https://t.co/2sRhBzt2TF

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Nice post on software engineering.
"Cognitive load is what matters"
https://t.co/eMgxu0YgWw
Probably the most true, least practiced viewpoint.