English

The most common problem for English learners like myself is that we often use a limited range of expressions. It isn’t usually a problem in everyday conversation, as we can still make ourselves understood.

However, writing becomes a challenge because we tend to notice repetitive use of the same words. Improving vocabulary isn’t easy unless we practice it in real life.

Taking English phone classes or attending offline English speaking sessions will not be helpful unless I intentionally practice the new expressions. I need to figure out how to learn new expressions and become familiar with them.

Cursor AI

Cursor AI is a VS Code extension that supports AI-powered code writing. I discovered it while watching a YouTube video describing Replit. Compared to Replit, Cursor AI requires human engineering efforts, but its code quality is superior.

I’ve transitioned my Flutter development environment to Cursor AI. Previously, I used Android Studio with Copilot and requested ChatGPT to write Flutter code. It wasn’t efficient since I had to copy and paste whenever I asked a question and apply the answer to my codebase.

With Cursor AI, I no longer need to do this redundant work. I can directly open a chat in the window and include any files in the context. Then, Cursor AI shows suggestions, and I can click the ‘apply’ button to make a change. I need to trigger a hot-start to show a diff manually, but it’s okay.

Furthermore, Cursor AI supports various language models, such as ChatGPT and Claude. The better model I use, the better the outcome.

Design and planning skills will become critical. While LLM can quickly implement codes for given requirements and is often faster than a human programmer, it becomes slower when the requirements are too big or conflicting requirements are suddenly introduced. Therefore, someone who can design an entire system and break the project into small tasks can achieve the goal faster while consuming fewer resources.

Funeral

On Friday morning, my mom called me suddenly and told me that my uncle had passed away the day before. I had seen him two weeks ago when I went to my grandmother’s home to take her to the restaurant.

It was the first time one of my relatives had died. Both of my grandfathers passed away when I was very young, so I have no memory of them. No other relatives had died before, but he did.

I only realized what had happened when I arrived at the hospital. Seeing my uncle’s face in the photograph, I immediately felt that he had passed away and would never return.

At that time, I felt that death would eventually come to everyone in this room, no matter how long they lived. If I outlived others, I would have to face the death of all my family members. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that moment.

Nobody can predict when their time will end, nor can they foresee the passing of their loved ones.

Mogakco

Mogakco is a self-study meetup where individuals come together to work on their own coding projects. I participate in the meetup whenever I am not visiting my hometown. Since I easily get tired and distracted, meetups force me to concentrate.

The majority of participants are junior engineers with less than 3 years of experience in their careers. People attend the meetup to work on their company tasks, study, or pursue side hustles.

Since people are introverted and soft-spoken, we only talk a little, even when having lunch together. Nevertheless, the meetup is still a fair place to meet people in the same field outside my company.