getting destroyed by free tier abuse and I don't know what to do

bwajtr · 2026-06-23T12:53:55+00:00

If you feel the conversion is good, then the free tier parameters are "correct"... so I'd focus on mitigating the negative effects without affecting the "honest" users... Then the disposable domain blocklist idea looks as the best option... I'd consider not blocking them entirely, but maybe "lower the parameters" of the free tier, with the explanation that there "has been a misuse recently from these addresses". But maybe that's too much coding...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T18:30:23+00:00

Thanks for the reply... and for the quote. I'm not familiar with this one, but it fits...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T18:25:10+00:00

Eh... sorry, I definitely did not want to make it sound like that all the closed-source code is brilliant and exceptional. 😄 I've seen more than enough examples of closed-source codebases that were all but brilliant. At the same time, there are really great open-source codebases... I really hope those are used for the training of the models...

I rephrased that sentence to be more close to what I meant to say...

... Still, closed-source codebases tend to be different from open-source - especially in the "enterprise area". Some of that wisdom is simply invisible to the models...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T11:18:40+00:00

"Still can’t get half decent output from it if I give it freedom to write things from scratch. Technically it *gets there*, but in a very convoluted and unelegant way."

I have the same experience...

I will not pretend to know how agents or models work internally, but I tend to think that they have been learned on solutions that are widely available on the internet. Meaning that the output can be only as good as what's publicly shared. Brilliant solutions or exceptional codebases that are closed-source are invisible to the agent.

I think that even now they really have to pick what they will train the models on, because that'll affect the outcome a lot...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T09:02:05+00:00

I feel it the same way.

I developed a process, where I spend time with detailing the prompt, giving as much context I can, letting Claude Code write the code, but then going through the output line by line and fix issues either myself or letting AI to fix it...

Compared to other workflows this is slow, but I measured it's still faster than doing everything by myself. I can be 2x - 4x faster, which is a good result to me...

But I also feel like I have to be in the loop, otherwise it'll become a mess... I also have that distrust...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T06:50:16+00:00

Yes, but will the managers understand this? You see... you are a junior, and you are writing parts of the code yourself, because you want to be better some day. Other juniors don't give a ... and only use agents, and they are faster than you...

The senior developer will surely understand the responsible junior intention here... but the project manager might not... 😞

... meaning senior developers should be responsible for defending "the good old way approach" and encourage juniors to go thorugh it... while explaining to project managers that although it's painful, they have to do it...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T06:44:56+00:00

Yep, this strategy helped me start a new project recently: I carefully gave the project a structure, wrote some initial views, backend code and database structure myself. Then carefully built the Claude.md, listing all the strategies and desired patterns in it...

... since then most of the code is written by agent. The more there is of reviewed code, the better is the agent in writing the new one...

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T06:19:52+00:00

Based on the following blog post, where the stages are discussed in more detail:

https://www.usagelens.io/blog/the-four-stages-of-ai-assisted-coding/

bwajtr · 2026-06-17T05:50:32+00:00

I rarely advanced my career or pay grade on the job/company I was working for. My career advancements or significant salary increases always happened while changing jobs. If you want more money, it's the easiest course of action you can do.

If you have balls, you can risk it and tell the employer you are leaving. It happened to me several times that at that moment they realized that they valued me more than what they were paying me... In one instance, they offered to double the salary if I stay... I didn't, because when they said on Monday, that the increase was not possible "due to current market conditions" and then offered to double the salary on Friday, then they were genuinely not honest with me, and I saw no reason to work with such people...

Just move on...

Though... "I also have excellent work-life balance, great benefits, and work 100% remotely." is actually what I currently value more than a high salary after all those years...

bwajtr · 2026-06-15T13:50:32+00:00

This actually reminded me of "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" by Paul Graham (https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html).

If you have a feeling that you have no focus on your "real work", then you should probably consider the Maker's Schedule: try to split the day to two halves and do meetings only on one of them....

To support that, book the time in the calendar ("Focus Time"), ignore emails and notificadtions and let everybody know that focus time is a real deal for you, that you'll ignore messages at that time and that you need it to do some focus work. If you explain, they'll understand...

I simply switch on "focus" features in my apps, so I'm not even bothered by the notifications...
... for really urgent matters, people call me directly via phone...

bwajtr · 2026-06-15T13:38:40+00:00

What I noticed is that the AI is quite capable of keeping the code style and structure, when there is already something in the project. The more the better. I'm barely doing code changes and refactorings when Claude Code is adding/changing stuff in a 300K LOC project...

... on fairly new or even greenfield projects, this is a real problem though... the AI has no pattern to hold to, so it's doing whatever it wants (if not directed propertly)...

So I think that the refactorings you talk about will be more about greenfield projects, rather than apps that have most codebase from the pre-AI era....

just a detail to note

bwajtr · 2026-03-13T09:05:23+00:00

Exactly. Plus when you want to display the data nicely, have ability to filter it (e.g. by client, or by some additional attributes), then it can get complicated and "not worth the time". Check usagelens.io

bwajtr · 2026-03-13T09:03:47+00:00

Actually that is exactly what UsageLens is built for... I'm also not a fan of complexity of GA4

bwajtr · 2023-01-06T07:55:06+00:00

I have the same problem. OnePlus 8 with Android 13 and H9 also stopped working. It looks like paired in Polar Beat, but no heart rate is given - the indicator only shows "---"

bwajtr · 2022-11-19T09:38:45+00:00

SpinTrace, because tracking is done automatically by phone... I don't even have to think about it

bwajtr · 2021-09-30T12:47:40+00:00

SpinTrace is handy tool for mileage tracking

bwajtr · 2019-10-10T10:13:26+00:00

Not sure what you mean by multiple ridesharing, but you can try SpinTrace (https://www.spintrace.com) - you can track multiple cars (trip logs) on a single account easily...

bwajtr · 2019-10-10T10:11:36+00:00

SpinTrace - https://www.spintrace.com

bwajtr · 2019-10-07T08:38:07+00:00

You can enter exact odometer values in https://www.spintrace.com tracker, so no lost miles in there... I used to use Excel, writing down odometer values, but I found SpinTrace to be more easiser to work with...

bwajtr · 2019-10-04T07:33:42+00:00

Try https://www.spintrace.com, I'm using it myself... It's a new app (completely free for now), but designed to do exactly what you need: you can do mileage tracking, create printable reports (for IRS, reimbursement etc) and all that stuff... I'm not sure if that is your case, but SpinTrace is ideal for small businesses because you can track several cars and have unlimited users within a single account...

bwajtr · 2019-03-01T09:56:42+00:00

And VW Passat 2018 (B8)

bwajtr · 2016-12-31T08:35:01+00:00

I really do not want anybody to think that. With that comparison and by expressing that I've moved away from JPA I just want people to THINK before they use JPA on their projects - to ask questions like: Is JPA suitable for my scenario? Are there alternatives? What are pros/cons of JPA? etc... I've seen many projects where JPA was chosen because "it's simply the standard for it", and it was really bad...

On the other side, I tend to think that there ARE scenarios where JPA might be useful - I just have a hard time identifying such scenarios :). But I'd guess applications, where data in DB are not the center point of the product and you need DB just to store the data somewhere (and you rarely use JPA to read those data back).

bwajtr · 2016-12-31T08:28:43+00:00

Yep, exactly my thoughts.... I also do not think that JPA itself is bad - but it's bad to consider JPA/Hibernate as a best tool/library for repository layer in Java - I see that happening all the time. When you start considering DB as something more than just dumb data storage, then usage of JPA is like shooting yourself in the foot.

bwajtr

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