## Tips and tricks

### for

# Coding Smarter

## Jul 18, 2025

#### [Hobson Lane](#links) [1](#links)

#### Tangible AI

--v--

## What is FBC?

Note:
Before we get started, a quick AI side quest about coding faster.
Anyone know what I mean by FBC? Faster Better Cheaper
Who came up with the FBC acronym? Dan Goldin, NASA admin 92?

--v--

## “FBC” can mean different things ...

```text
1️⃣ Full Blood Count (FBC) – ...
2️⃣ Facebook (slang) – ...
3️⃣ Federal Business Center – ...
4️⃣ Fellowship Baptist Church – ...
5️⃣ Flat-Base Correction (in analytics) – ...
```

--v--

## 6 BS Answers

<table>
<tr>
 <th>Prompt</th><th>Answer</th>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>What is FBC?</td>
 <td>Full Blood Count, Facebook, Fed Biz Cntr, Fllwshp Bbtst Chrch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>FBC science?</td><td>Full Blood Count</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>FBC astronomy?</td><td>Filter Bandpass Calibration (hypothet.) Full Band Capture (possible)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>FBC aerospace?</td><td>Fixed Base Control</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>FBC aerospace engineering?</td><td>🚀Flight Baseline Configuration</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>Who invented FBC in 92?</td><td>Fixed-base Control approach by Lozano & Broliato</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td> </td><td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>NASA FBC</td><td>🚀Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC)</td>
</tr>
</table>

Note:
RLHF: ChatGPT asked me to thumbs up one of two wrong answers.
I gave it what it asked for.

--v--

## FBC LLMs?

Frumpier, Baser, Costlier

- `O(N^2)`
- 7 attempts
- [1300+ tokens](https://chatgpt.com/share/688140f1-dfb8-800c-b887-eb4b7aa8cf90)

Note:
Pages of misleading slop to read through.

--v--

## Fresh start

What does FBC stand for in the context of Aerospace Engineering and Astronomy?

```
In Aerospace Engineering and Astronomy, FBC most commonly stands for:
1️⃣ Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC)
2️⃣ Flux Balance Calculation (less common)
```

Note:
Less common, you're not kidding...
I'm surprised it didn't just say Flux Capacitor

--v--

[![Ngrams not found: Flux Balance Calculation](/2025-07-24/ngrams-fbc.png)](/2025-07-24/ngrams-fbc.png)

--v--

[![Wikipedia 2 results](/2025-07-24/PUG5-FBC-wikipedia.png)](/2025-07-24/PUG5-FBC-wikipedia.png)

--v--

## Full text search?

- Repeatable (Sciencable)
- Precise (<100 tokens)
- Online (real-time) indexing
- Fast & cheap - ``O(log(N))``

Note:
- You get good at search by getting smarter (expanding your vocabulary)
- Exact results mean less BS to waste your time
- You can add documents in real-time as you crawl the web

- Bloom filters can make it even faster and cheaper than log(N)
- AI is O(N^2) and often even worse if you don't have a GPU server farm.

- look for the "fragment"

--v--

## Automate the boring stuff

Here are some FBC tools for you:

1. [Workon](#Workon)
2. [Anaconda](#Anaconda)
3. [mkSlides](#blogs)
4. [UV](#uv)
5. [~/bin/bash](#bin)
6. [Aider](#aider)
7. [ngrok/tailscale]

Note:
1. John May and other linuxy friends forked my workon script and made it work for them
2. Anaconda autolinter plugin for Sublime turns it into an agentic IDE
3. Astro and other SSGs can turn your notes-to-self into high quality blog content
4. `alias pip=uv pip` # UV is smarter about managing python dependencies and has an interface that "modernizes" pip with some useful features from poetry and npm (packages.lock, .python_ver, uv add)
5. When you figure something out creating a script for it or dump hist (in ipython, python, or shell) to a ~/bin/hists/ annotating with expected outout where that is important. then convert that script to a function if you find yourself doing it often.
6. Put your task into aider as a prompt, running a large model locally (slowly) then go back to your IDE to stub out your architecture or draft a function, comparing your approach to AI's. When I asked about 'is there a pathlib.Path method for determining if a Path is absolute it gave me .is_absolute() but not .relative_to() which i found by playing around in the REPL.

---

## ``workon``[3](#links)

Git smart about switching contexts

1. saveall in your IDE
1. do a commit and push before you leave a project, leaving a FIXME in the comment
2. before closing your IDE make a small breaking change wherever your cursor last was I usually just type FIXME: was working here
3. save all files in your IDE again
4. do `git diff` to see your FIXME syntax error line
5. add the line 'git diff' to a .workon script in the project root directory

--v--

## USAGE

```bash
(hobs) hobs@ryz:~$ workon blogs
```

```
Time to workon blogs (blogs), looking for source **code** dir first ...
[[ -d '/home/hobs/code/hobs/blogs' ]]
CHANGING WORKING DIR: /home/hobs/code/hobs/blogs
Time to run_customized_workon , looking for source code dir first ...
FOUND WORKON CONFIG: ./.workon
mkslides, version 1.0.10
reveal.js, version 5.2.1
highlight.js themes, version 11.11.1
RUNNING: mkslides serve ./slides/
running `mkslides build ./slides/` to refresh slides, just in case.
[07/24/25 19:16:29] INFO     Loaded config from '/home/hobs/code/hobs/blogs/slides.nlpia.org/mkslides.yml'
                    INFO     Output directory: '/home/hobs/code/hobs/blogs/slides.nlpia.org/site'
```

Note:
Note anything that looks like Python in the output above?

--v--

## Install ``workon``[3](#links)

```bash
wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/bash_functions.sh
mkdir -p ~/bin
mv bash_functions.sh ~/bin/

```

---

## Linters

- ``pep8`` (``pycodestyle``)
- ``pylint``
- ``pyflakes``
- ``flake8``
- ``ruff``
- ``black``

Note:
Are any of these auto-linters that will clean up your code for you?

--v--

## Anaconda Autolinter

```
[CTRL]-[SHIFT]-P
install[ENTER]"
anaconda[ENTER]""
```
 
<img src="/2025-07-24/sublime-ctrl-shift-p-inst.png" alt="" height="250" />
 
<img src="/2025-07-24/sublime-anaconda.png" height=250 />

Note:
Autolinters will warn you about things that they can't fix:
- unused imports
- unused vars
- redifined vars or imports

--v--

## Anaconda Settings

```json
{
    "python_interpreter": "python3.8",
    /*  If anaconda_linter_show_errors_on_save is set to true, anaconda
        will show a list of errors when you save the file. */
    "anaconda_linter_show_errors_on_save": true,
    /*  E309 is ignored by default as it conflicts with pep257 E211
        W503 is ignored by default as it conflicts with pep8 W504 */
    "pep8_ignore": ["E309", "W503"],
```

--v--

## ``Anaconda.sublime-settings`` [4](#links) [5](#links)

#### _`~/.config/sublime-text/Packages/User/Anaconda.sublime-settings`_
```bash
wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User/Anaconda.sublime-settings
cp Anaconda.sublime-settings $HOME/.config/sublime-text/Packages/User/
```

### OR

#### _`~/.config/sublime-text/Packages/User/*`_
```bash
wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User.tar.gz
tar -xvf slides/2025-07-24/User.tar.gz \
    --one-top-level=$HOME/.config/sublime-text/Packages
```

---

## Create content...

- Otherwise known as docs
- Not for your users, but
- **YOURSELF**

--v--

## mkslides

```bash
mkslides build slides
mkslides serve slides
```

---

## Use UV

```bash
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh \
  || pip install uv
echo "alias venv='uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate'" >> \
   ~/.bashrc
source .bashrc
```

```bash
mkdir ~/code/awesome-new-project
workon awesome-new-project || cd ~/code/awesome-new-project
venv
```

--a-

## Maintain your tools

- Dogfood your code
- python2 workon script needs upgrading [2](#links)
- add your tools to readline <TAB> completion

---

## Stop mousing around

- Create hotkeys whenever you find yourself hitting a menu a lot
- Consolidate your hotkeys across all applications:
  - ctrl-A go to beginning of line
  - ctrl-E go to end of line
  - ctrl-P to go to a file by name
  - ctrl-shift-F to search/replace all in project files
  - ctrl-shift-H to search and replace in current file
  - ctrl-shift-C to copy (to avoid ctrl-C in terminal/shell)
  - ctrl-X to cut

---

## Sublime autolinting

`Anaconda` plugin turns Sublime Text into an IDE.

#### Each time you save:
- Automatically fix most PEP8 errors
- Flag unused imports
- Flag unused variables
- Flag redefined vars

--v--

## Install with "Package Control"

```text
ctrl-shift-P:
  -> Install Package
     -> Anaconda
```

--v--

## [Custom settings](/2025-07-10/Anaconda.sublime-settings)

#### [_`~/.config/sublime-text/Packages/User/Anaconda.sublime-settings`_](/2025-07-10/Anaconda.sublime-settings)
```json
{
    "python_interpreter": "python3.8",  # IMPORTANT!!!
    "anaconda_linter_show_errors_on_save": true,
    "pep8_ignore": ["E309", "W503"],
    "pep8_max_line_length": 150,
}
```

```bash
sudo apt install python3.8 python3.8-dev
```

---

## Links

1. [NLPiA.org](https://nlpia.org)
2. [``pip install workon``](https://github.com/henocdz/workon)
3. [``wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/bash_functions.sh``](nlpia.org/2025-07-24/bash_functions.sh)
4. [``wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User/Anaconda.sublime-settings``](nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User/Anaconda.sublime-settings)
5. [``wget nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User.tar.gz``](nlpia.org/2025-07-24/User.tar.gz)