Sean is Coding #12: Jobly Adventures, AI Geek-Out & More!

React is fun but unit testing in React is not fun.

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to another issue of Sean is Coding! I've got a shorter update for you this week, but still packed with exciting news. Let's dive in!

🎯 Jobly Front-End: A Busy Sprint

This week we had a multi-day sprint implementing the front-end for Jobly, an Indeed.com-like job search tool. You might remember that we built the backend in Express two weeks ago. We created the frontend as a mostly single-page app using React, and I've got to say, I absolutely despise unit testing the frontend. However, I do enjoy working with React despite its faults—it feels more like backend engineering but on the frontend, thanks to modular components and hierarchy.

💡 Full-Stack Exposure & Learning

Working end-to-end has been super fun, and I'm loving the exposure to both sides of development. The variety of programming challenges is helping me approach engineering problems more logically and stay organized.

🤖 AI Corner: Geek Out Time!

I've been geeking out over some of the latest AI innovations this week. It's incredible how fast things are happening:

• I got access to Pinecone's free plan for vector DB storage (congrats on the huge funding round, Pinecone!). I'm excited to play around with AutoGPT and Langchain—stay tuned for more on that.

• Tana, one of my favorite note-taking apps, launched a game-changing AI feature that lets you build custom prompts and auto-populate fields. I've started using it for a JavaScript reference data type methods table, but that's just the beginning!

• OpenAI extended my access to ChatGPT plugins, including GPT-4 with browsing. It's still a bit finicky, but having an AI agent research on your behalf is mind-blowing. I've been asking it to research and write interesting prompts for Midjourney.

• Speaking of, here are some different “unexpected double exposures” I’ve been playing around with. I’m finding that MJ v5 can really generate some stunning shots if you give it just a few powerful descriptors:

  

  Astronaut, forest, double exposure --ar 16:9 --q 2 --s 750 --v 5

  

  Vintage car, desert landscape, double exposure --ar 16:9 --q 2 --s 750 --v 5

  

  Fire, ice cubes, double exposure --ar 16:9 --q 2 --s 750 --v 5

🔜 Next Week: More Progress

Can't wait to share more about my progress next week! Until then, onward and upward!

Sean