Web Review, Week 2025-06

Friday, 7 February 2025 | Kevin Ottens

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-06.

Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations | Quanta Magazine

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, mathematics, logic

When you put the marketing claims aside, the limitations of those models become obvious. This is important, only finding the root cause of those limitations can give a chance to find a solution to then.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/chatbot-software-begins-to-face-fundamental-limitations-20250131/

LLMs: harmful to technical innovation?

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, innovation, learning, vendor-lockin

This will definitely push even more conservatism around the existing platforms. More articles mean more training data… The underdogs will then suffer.

https://evanhahn.com/llms-and-technical-innovation/

Bad idea: “Artificial Intelligence” automatically improves productivity

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, programming, productivity

Be wary of the unproven claims that using LLMs necessarily leads to productivity gains. The impacts might be negative.

https://jchyip.medium.com/bad-idea-artificial-intelligence-automatically-improves-productivity-0829fcf2146c

The LLM Curve of Impact on Software Engineers

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, productivity, learning

Again it’s definitely not useful for everyone… it might even be dangerous for learning.

https://serce.me/posts/2025-02-07-the-llm-curve-of-impact-on-software-engineers

SQLite or PostgreSQL? It’s Complicated!

Tags: tech, databases, performance, postgresql, sqlite

It shows unexpected results in its measurements. It also highlights the importance of proper settings for your database system.

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/sqlite-postgresql-complicated

Falsehoods programmers believe about null pointers | purplesyringa’s blog

Tags: tech, memory

If you didn’t realise that null pointers open a maze of different traps, this is a good summary of widespread misconceptions.

https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-null-pointers/

String vs &str

Tags: tech, rust, memory

Another reminder that you don’t want reference to primitive types everywhere in Rust code. There’s actually ways to handle this properly. This post gives a couple of simple guidelines to apply.

https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/string-vs-str/