Niklas Saers
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Spec-Driven AI Development

You write a prompt, hit enter, and watch the console light up green. Code pours out. It feels like magic. Then you try to maintain the thing a week later, and you realize your shiny new AI agent just built a leaking bucket.

Recent Writing

August 8, 2014 • Technology

Back to Node

By now I have gone through a number of Elixir web frameworks, a web framework in Cocoa, and not really been able to release my homepage in a way that I liked. So what would be more natural than to drop the code and try something else, perhaps something that I've worked on before and found wanting? Hello Node.js (+Express & CoffeeScript).

July 12, 2014 • Technology

Migrating to Cocoa

In my last post, I was exploring new web frameworks to migrate to, while learning more Elixir. I attempted a few, but learning a framework can be uphill, especially when not being fluent in the language. The main frustrating point was not being able to understand the errors I was getting. They were usually in one, long, truncated line. So not only was it formatted poorly, it didn't give me all the information that was intended for me. I didn't really find a good way of getting better error information or analyzing the errors I was getting, so finally I gave up... for now.

June 17, 2014 • Technology

Choosing a new web framework with Elixir

My first "real" Elixir project was to build my own homepage with my blog and portfolio. I wrote it using Dynamo. Not the best of choices, since it now recommends I look other places. The options I've found so far are:

June 16, 2014 • iOS

Remote View Controllers in iOS 8

What really excites me the most about iOS 8 right now is Remote View Controllers, which I mentioned around iOS 6. Right now they are presented as something you use to implement services (extensions in iOS parlance), but combine them with auto-layout and adaptable view controllers, and you have a setup for presenting your app on an iWatch or an embedded display, for instance in a smart cover or an AppleTV widget. Embedding widgets accross iOS and mac devices is also an avenue I hope we developers soon get to explore. :-)

February 21, 2014 • Discussion

Follow-up on Erlang and Elixir

Dear John,

March 22, 2013 • Technology

Remote View Controllers

Dear iOS dev,
if you haven't already read Ole Begemann's article on Remote View Controllers (and part 2 and part 3), you should do so now. I think and hope this will be one of those bread-and-butter features of iOS 7, so now would be a great time to think of where XPC and remote views fit into your existing and upcoming apps.

November 19, 2012 • Technology

Fusion Drive on iMac 2011

Last week I made sure I have good backups of my iMac. I usually do, but I wanted to make doubly sure, as this weekend, I would nuke my disks to make a fusion drive on my iMac from 2011.

October 24, 2012 • General

Fix for Safari not loading google.com and many other sites

I had the weirdest problem: Safari couldn't load most HTTPS sites and many others. It hadn't for many days, even though Chrome, Firefox etc worked fine. Turned out it was all solved by deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.revocation.plist

September 14, 2012 • Discussion

Properties in Cocoa and OOA&D

The past month or so I’ve reviewed a lot of code, and one issue is cropping up all the time: too much use of @property

August 11, 2012 • General

We're expecting a boy this Christmas

Dear Friends, Followers, and random people of the internet,