Real Coding Vlog - Software Engineer Self-Employment Life (ep. -2.0.1)

Hello and welcome to another instance of my winter coding vlog. I am an indie app developer based in Osland, Norway, and I just try to take you guys with me along

and share my days and stories as they unfold. Now, today is very early in the

unfold. Now, today is very early in the morning. We're covered in snow and I

morning. We're covered in snow and I just dropped off my daughter in kindergarten, so it's time to do some work. The city is really just waking up

work. The city is really just waking up and it's very quiet and peaceful. And

somehow when you have a lot of snow, I noticed it reduces echo in the streets.

So, it sounds like almost like you're inside. There is a different sound to

inside. There is a different sound to the whole city. It's much more quiet.

It's much more peaceful. But anyhow, I'm taking a quick ride to the neighborhood that we reviewed recently actually in one of the previous vlogs because I wanted to see what it looks like now when it's all frozen. And I know that

this will sound a little bit hypocritical coming from a parent, but secretly I really do enjoy walking through deep, deep snow, even though it would be seen as very irresponsible thing to do by some parent trying to

educate their child. But there is nothing you guys can do about it. And uh

yeah, my mom is not definitely not here.

You know, they say adulthood is when you can just go and buy a cake, but for me, I'd say it's when you can ignore previous instruction and just walk through the deepest part of the snow.

Anyhow, today I'll be working on a couple of improvements and bug fixes.

So, I want to take you along and share what it really looks like. Also, I

wanted to tell you some very useful information about tax law in Germany.

I know it's just what you signed up for, but believe me, this information might be entertaining to some. This door, by the way, is supposedly automatic, but it only works sometimes. And I was very

glad that it recognized me this time and it wanted to open all on its own. All

right. In the previous vlogs, I worked on this release notes window, and I I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. But

now, there was a bug in the meantime that appeared from a user that I really just wanted to fix right away. So, I

will stash the changes that I have for now. And by the way, before we get

now. And by the way, before we get started, I just noticed that I have very low battery, like 13%. So, let's let's keep track on how it keeps up with a realistic development workflow that I'm

going to attempt now. So, what is the bug? Simply put, I was fixing some

bug? Simply put, I was fixing some serialization issues um with iCloud and you know there was this user who reported that it's impossible to delete uh some of the keyboard shortcuts. And I

realized what the problem is. It's

simply that I am overwriting them with the default values if I detect a null value. And so the fix really is to not

value. And so the fix really is to not model them as null, but instead create a new field that indicates that a shortcut is disabled. It's a pretty

is disabled. It's a pretty straightforward refactor. So I don't

straightforward refactor. So I don't want to bother you with the details but I wanted to tell you a funny story about tax law in Germany. Now this story starts uh when I just had a call with a friend of mine who is also a developer

and he lives in Germany and we didn't have time to catch up for a very long time maybe even over 3 years and the first thing that we start discussing is obviously tax law as you do and you know

he said something so out there that I think it's just worth sharing. So in

Germany, you know, apparently if you inherit 499 or less apartments, you have to pay a considerable amount in inheritance tax. That's at least my

inheritance tax. That's at least my understanding. But if you inherit 500 or

understanding. But if you inherit 500 or more houses, then you don't have to pay any tax whatsoever. As why is this relevant to us guys? Well, you know, a lot of us here on this channel, including myself who is working here and

including you guys who are watching, we are all kind of trying to put our skills and and kind of create a better future for ourselves with our work. And I think there's a positive angle to this story.

You know, guys, we don't have to grind forever. It's only until we get to 500

forever. It's only until we get to 500 apartments, then it becomes a lot easier. And I just wanted to tell you

easier. And I just wanted to tell you this uplifting story right at the start so that you don't feel bad if you know things are broken in in the code today.

It's only until we get to five other departments. But anyhow, at this point,

departments. But anyhow, at this point, I think I had the fix ready. And you

know, you can even delete some of the shortcuts, but I made a major bug that I didn't notice at this time. However, if

you paid attention to what I was typing, you might have been able to spot it. So,

maybe try to think about what it is.

Anyhow, one of the really interesting things is that after adding this one boolean to indicate that a keyboard shortcut is in fact disabled, I really only had to update a few places in the codebase that do some fuzzy matching of

the keyboard shortcuts. But because most of the places are checking for strict equality, I didn't really have to update any code at all because simply the existence of this boolean in the

keyboard shortcut strct is enough to break the equality and so the shortcuts immediately stopped working which I thought was very nifty and very cool and that's simply because uh you know strrus

are compared by value. Anyhow, the

battery is still going very strong only 3% down and I've been able to complete quite a decent amount of work. In one

final sanity check with the iCloud sync, I just wanted to make sure that some null values coming back from iCloud are not going to override the values that I have here. But apparently it was all

have here. But apparently it was all working. However, I was still completely

working. However, I was still completely oblivious to the bug that I made until I tried to paste something. Usually my

keyboard shortcut for opening the clipboard history is commandshiftv.

But now when I look into my preferences, all of the shift key modifiers are completely gone. And that's simply

completely gone. And that's simply because I entirely forgot to initialize the shift boolean in the keyboard shortcut constructor. But I guess one of

shortcut constructor. But I guess one of the really good things about actually using my own app is that I immediately notice these things. Most of the features are something that I would use

many many times on a daily basis. And so

that's kind of what what I really like about my app. But anyhow, so far I only used half of my coffee tokens to complete this task. So I felt like I can maybe tackle one more. So on the discord

server there is this bug with the window switcher that I user reported which really is not a bug it's a known limitation so to say where if you have many windows open they will overflow the

UI so the list goes down and to infinity. Now I already had a solution

infinity. Now I already had a solution for this in the clipboard history because I didn't anticipate you would have the same amount of windows as you would have items in the history. So the

history will scroll there is a kind of like a sliding window that happens in the history itself. So we only show like 10 items and then you can go down and so on. So I pulled up claude to see if it

on. So I pulled up claude to see if it will handle it because we already have this same exact pattern in the codebase.

It should be able to just replicate a simple thing like that. But before I even managed to get started, Anthropic was apparently having some issues with authentication. And it took me quite a

authentication. And it took me quite a while to resolve it actually. But in the meantime, because I had to wait for this to kind of start working again, a quick sponsored segment helps me pay the bills

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so after finally Anthropic started to get back to work again, I guess I submitted my prompt and it did produce some code that looked fairly believable.

And a quick check-in with the battery after 2 hours, it used basically like 10% which I think is pretty good.

Honestly, I was compiling my app. I was

doing a lot of different things and so far I'm really happy with the battery life. Now, one funny thing is that I

life. Now, one funny thing is that I sometimes don't use my own app with a pro account because most of the features are free anyway. So, to be able to test this Windows switcher feature, I I had

to give myself a pro account. Anyhow, I

expected Claude to do many things, but I didn't expect it would make the UI move all by itself. Like, I really only asked a simple scrolling thing. But look, I'm

not pressing any buttons here, and it's moving all on its own. And that's maybe the reason that I'm struggling to use all of my claw tokens is that maybe I'm just bad at prompting. But it has a way of disappointing me occasionally, and

this is one of those days. So, in the end, I had to spend some time fixing the code myself. And in the meantime, I

code myself. And in the meantime, I finally did get the warning for the battery. So, I plugged in real quick.

battery. So, I plugged in real quick.

And it turns out instead of burning my claw tokens, I had to burn all my coffee tokens. But I made it work. It wasn't

tokens. But I made it work. It wasn't

all that difficult after all. And it

feels really smooth. I will have to test it a lot more by myself before I release it. But so far, I'm going to have to

it. But so far, I'm going to have to call it a day here because I've used up all of my coffee. I have to get back home to prepare some food. In the

meantime, I picked up some snacks just to have in case my daughter is extremely hungry when she comes back. But one

funny thing is that the door just didn't want to open all by itself. I really

still haven't figured out the algorithm behind it, but I will get to the bottom of what's going on. Anyhow, I really appreciate you guys watching my vlogs and supporting me. And I wonder what's your experience using AI? Are you able

to get it to reliably do everything you want? I'm looking for ways to improve

want? I'm looking for ways to improve myself. So, if you have any ideas, just

myself. So, if you have any ideas, just let me know. And if you enjoy these videos, make sure to like and subscribe.

It really helps me a lot. I appreciate

every single one of you because I'm just a little guy competing with the big guys and with the big production crews and I do all of this on my own. So, I just wanted to say thanks and I will see you in the next