My apps are free or freemium with a one time payment. I just started publishing, and my main drive is resentment towards the current state of surveillance in software. It doesn't have to be filled with ads and trackers on top of a subscription.
I found the perfect sweet spot for my hobby development. I pay 7 euros for Gemini plus and use it for creating the architecture and technical specs. Those are fed to Sonnet on Pro that just implements the instructions. This gives plenty of space to do long sessions several times a week.
I am one of those lazy IT guys that is very content working in support and ops. I understand a lot of programming concepts and do a bit of automation scripting but never really bothered to learn any proper language fully. Vibe coding was made for people like me. I just need something that works, but I can still ask for code that can be maintained and expanded if needed.
It finally clicked for me when I tried Gemini and ChatGPT side by side. I found that my style of working is more iterative than starting with a fully formed plan. Gemini did well on oneshots, but my lack of experience made the output messy. This made it clear to me that the more chatty ChatGPT was working for me since it seems to incorporate new stuff better. Great for those "Oh, crap I didn't think of that" moments that come up for inexperienced devs like me.
With ChatGPT I use a modular approach. I first plan a high level concept with 03, then we consider best practices for each. After that I get best results with 4o and Canvas since that model doesn't seem to overthink and change direction as much. Granted, my creations are not pushing up against the limits of human knowledge, but I consistently get clean maintainable results this way.
Recently I made a browser extension to show me local times when I hover over text on a website that shows an international time. It uses regex to find the text, and I would never have been able to crank this out myself without spending considerable time learning it.
This weekend I made a Linux app to help rice a spare monitor so it shows scrolling cheat sheets to help me memorize stuff. This turned out so well, that I might put it up on GitHub.
For dilettantes like me this opens up a whole new world of fun and possibilities.
This is a thing. Going to the races and watching horses warming up in a paddock is very informative to those in the know. The first time i went, my girlfriend's father pointed out a horse that none if the others would run past, and that horse won it's heat.
Thankfully, international shipping safety standards aren’t left up to individual manufacturers. Having worked on ships worldwide for several years, I’ve seen how each major incident drives tighter, more effective regulations.
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), established in 1974, is continually updated based on lessons from past accidents, mandating strict requirements for all ships over a certain size. Parts of SOLAS even apply universally to all ships on any voyage, regardless of size. https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International...