satran

I am a little late to the "vibe coding" trend. While I’d played around with LLMs for simple scripting, I hadn't truly integrated them into my workflow. But for a recent itch, I thought I'd give it all.

I use a Supernote A5X2 for taking notes. I couldn't find the perfect dot grid for it. I wanted something simple—a light, 6mm spaced dot grid. Every generator I found online came with a catch: they either slapped a watermark on the page, forced their logo into the corner, or simply didn't work.

Usually, building a custom PDF generator means spending an hour documentation-diving to find the right library and figuring out coordinate systems. I didn't have the luxury of time, so I gave Gemini a prompt describing exactly what I wanted: the command, arguments, and what I expected to get out of it.

With these instructions it popped out a functional Python script using beautifulsoup, I think (I don’t have the original Python code, Gemini decided to delete it). It worked remarkably well. With a few follow-up prompts to tweak the spacing and dot density, I had a near perfect PDF.

The script worked for me, but I wanted to share it with the Supernote community. Most users aren't going to install Python and run terminal commands just to get a notebook template. I needed a web application. But I didn’t want to run a server and have it generate the PDF. I wanted a static file that I could host it in GitHub.

I went back to Gemini with a new challenge: “Build me a pure JavaScript application that generates this PDF entirely in the browser.”

Gemini generated the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files using a client-side library. After a few rounds of "polishing the vibes"—tweaking the UI and refining the PDF output—I had exactly what I envisioned.

You can see the final product here https://satran.github.io/grid-generator and the source code is available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/satran/grid-generator.

Looking back, what I enjoyed most wasn't the speed, but the scaffolding. I didn’t have to research which JS library was best for PDF generation; the LLM picked a standard one and implemented it correctly. It created the structural "bones" of the app, allowing me to focus on supplementing and finalising the details rather than writing boilerplate code. I went from a minor annoyance to a public-facing tool in a fraction of the time it would have taken traditionally. I think I’m officially a convert. This is it: I can focus on the intent of the code and let the LLM handle the syntax.

I like using text files. I also like using shell script to automate most of the things I do. When using an iPhone I couldn't do most of these things. So I created a web application that would allow me to do just that. Basically it evaluates `!command` and ```! multi line code block ``` in place.

Honestly it is quite in the early stages but would like your feedback on it. Here is the GitHub page: https://github.com/satran/dabba

I was reading a comment here[1] and realised that there are a few here who are not working as developers or in fields related to software. I know a few mathematicians and physicists linger here. But bartender was new. So my question. What do you do?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22771746

I was reading the paper on Computational Thinking by Jeannette M. Wing[1]. In it there was a section about how it was used in daily life. Here are a few examples:

Hashing. After a talk I gave at a department faculty meeting on my computational thinking vision, Danny Sleator came up to tell me that at his home they use a particular hashing function to store away Lego pieces. According to Sleator, they hash on these categories: rectangular thick blocks, other thick (non-rectangular) blocks, thins (of any shape), wedgies, axles, rivets and spacers, fits on axle, ball and socket, and miscellaneous. They even have rules to classify pieces that could fit into more than one category. He said that “Even though this is pretty crude, it saves about a factor of 10 when looking for a piece.” Avrim Blum overheard Danny telling me this story and chimed in to say “At our home, we use a different hash function.”

Sorting. The following story is taken verbatim from an email sent by Roger Dannenberg, a professional trumpeter and computer scientist. “I showed up to a big band gig, and the band leader passed out books with maybe 200 unordered charts and a set list with about 40 titles we were supposed to get out and place in order, ready to play. Everyone else started searching through the stack, pulling out charts one-at-a-time. I decided to sort the 200 charts alphabetically O(N log(N)) and then pull the charts O(M log(N)). I was still sorting when other band members were half-way through their charts, and I started to get some funny looks, but in the end, I finished first. That's computational thinking.”

Do you have some experiences about how you used computational thinking either in your personal life or at work?

[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/resources/TheLinkWing.pdf