Coder

Why AI Tests Are Tricky

People give AIs tests called benchmarks. But passing a test is not the same as being truly smart. Let's find out why.

Test Prep Basics: Practicing With AI

Before the SAT or big exams, AI can make you endless practice questions. The trick is actually doing them, not just reading answers.

World Geography: Exploring Places with AI

Geography used to be memorizing capitals. Now you can take a virtual tour, ask questions, and actually remember where things are and why.

Can You Fool the AI?

Write a sneaky prompt and see if AI falls for it (and why it sometimes does).

ChatGPT, November 2022

A research preview posted on a Wednesday became the fastest-growing consumer product in history.

Where Training Data Actually Comes From

You cannot understand modern AI without understanding its diet. Let's map where the data comes from, how it gets cleaned, and what that means.

Few-Shot Prompting: Teach by Example

Instead of describing what you want, show the AI two or three examples. Few-shot prompting is often the fastest way to get consistent output.

When Prompts Fail: Debugging Checklist

Bad output is almost never random. It's a clue. Here's how to diagnose and fix a broken prompt instead of just mashing the regenerate button.

Your Data Is Somebody's Training Fuel

Your posts, chats, photos, and behavior have been scraped, sold, and fed to models. Here is what has actually happened and what you can actually do.

What Does AI-Assisted Coding Even Mean?

AI-assisted coding is not magic and not cheating. It is a new way of working where a model drafts, you decide. Let's draw a map before we start building.

Your First Copilot-Style Completion

Let's actually feel what autocomplete is like. Write a comment, pause, and watch a full function appear. Then learn what to do next.

Prompting for Code Is Different From Prompting for Prose

A prompt that writes a poem is not the same as a prompt that ships working code. Code has hidden standards. You need to make them explicit.

When AI Writes Buggy Code — How to Read It Critically

The AI will hand you code that looks right but isn't. Here are the most common bugs and the habits that catch them before they bite.

Debugging With AI Help

Bugs are where AI is most useful and most humbling. Paste errors, ask for causes, run experiments, and learn how to get a real answer instead of a guess.

Tests as Prompts — an Unexpected Superpower

Writing a test first is not just good engineering. It is the clearest possible prompt for an AI. Let's use tests to make AI code reliable.

Scaling Laws and Compute-Optimal Training

Dive into the equations that governed the last five years of AI progress, and the fresh questions they raise now that pure scaling is hitting walls.

Multi-Turn Reasoning: Agents That Think Across Steps

Some problems need more than one prompt. Learn how to design multi-turn reasoning flows — reflection, critique, retry — that give you AI which actually solves hard problems.

Meta-Prompting: AI That Writes AI Prompts

Use an AI to write, optimize, and debug your prompts. Meta-prompting is how top teams ship production prompts faster than humans alone could write them.

Red-Teaming Your Own Prompts

Before shipping, attack your own prompts. Inject, confuse, overload, and role-swap. If you don't find the holes, your users will.

Evaluating Prompt Performance: From Vibes to Metrics

You can't improve what you don't measure. Build an eval set, pick metrics, and turn prompt engineering from gut-feel into a rigorous discipline.

Red-Teaming: The Ethics of Breaking AI on Purpose

Red-teamers get paid to make AI misbehave. The field has grown into a real discipline — with its own methods, its own ethics, and its own unresolved questions.

The Landscape: Copilot vs. Cursor vs. Windsurf vs. Claude Code

The AI coding tool market fragmented fast. Let's map the 2026 landscape honestly: who is for autocomplete, who is for agents, who wins on cost, and what the tradeoffs actually feel like.

Installing and Using Claude Code CLI

Claude Code is Anthropic's terminal-native coding agent. Let's install it, wire it to a project, and use the features most engineers miss on day one.

Installing and Using the OpenAI Codex CLI

Codex CLI is OpenAI's terminal coding agent. It runs locally, supports MCP, and ships a codex cloud mode for background tasks. Let's install it and compare it honestly to Claude Code.

Agents vs. Autocomplete — the Mental Model Shift

Autocomplete is a suggestion. An agent is an actor. The mental model you bring to each is different, and conflating them is the number-one reason teams trip over AI coding.

MCP — Connecting External Tools to AI Coding Agents

Model Context Protocol is the USB-C of AI tools. Learn the protocol, wire up a server, and understand why this standard quietly changed the ecosystem.

Long-Context Code Understanding — The 1M-Token Era

Frontier models now read a million tokens of your codebase in one shot. That changes how we architect prompts, retrieval, and the cost curve of agentic work.

Test-Driven AI Development

TDD was already the gold standard. Paired with an agent, it becomes the tightest feedback loop in software. Here's the full workflow and the pitfalls.

Validating An Idea With AI (Without Fooling Yourself)

AI can draft your landing page, your interview script, and your positioning in an hour. It can also help you lie to yourself. Here's how to use it honestly.

Registering An LLC (Or Waiting Until You're 18)

When to form an LLC, when not to, and how to do it when the time comes. Plus the legal facts of being under 18. Delaware adds filing costs, requires a registered agent, and you'll still have to register in your home state as a foreign entity if you operate there.