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Matt Lacey

@mrlacey

Writer of code and words. Military husband. Clergy spouse.

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24.07.2023
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Latest posts by Matt Lacey @mrlacey

Hallucinations or gaslighting???

28.01.2026 14:12 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Why does clicking the "Join" button for a meeting still require clicking several more buttons before actually being able to join

03.12.2025 18:03 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

At some point early this morning I passed 3.5 million views on my blog. Not bad as I only write it for me.
Surprisingly, views have gone up in recent months, which counters the expectation that AI answers are replacing all web search traffic

03.12.2025 18:02 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Post image

is CoPilot messing with me?

Is alphabetical order harder than maths and counting letters in a word?

#ai

22.10.2025 12:24 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

๐Ÿ”œ๐Ÿ

17.10.2025 07:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I'm going to my first Hackathon in a couple of years next week.
Today I've watched some project demos from a recent Hackathon. They had 10 mins each and just gave a really bad presentation.
I'm looking forward to giving a 90sec summary of what I do next weekend

03.10.2025 13:27 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Ooh, just found some early POC videos from a project two and a bit years ago.
Some of that functionality still isn't in the released product.
There's probably a reason I'm not a Product manager/owner...yet!

19.09.2025 14:33 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Preview
Innovation and development at the heart of Landscape Performance Live - Pro Landscaper UK Landscape Performance Live will be returning to FutureScape 2025, having made its successful debut last year.

Ever thought about creating a digital twin for your landscape?
www.prolandscapermagazine.com/2025/09/18/i...

19.09.2025 08:22 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

It means the thing I built to make working with PRs easier, faster, and more reliable, doesn't work in some of the places it would be most useful :/

05.09.2025 09:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

TIL: GitHub lets organizations prevent accounts accessing some data via API that those users can get via the UI.
I can see how that might be useful or necessary but it also stops some of my automated tools from working with some repos.

05.09.2025 09:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I've just been caught out by people who have used both on shared projects where these magic values mean different things on different people's machines. I'm against using either.

02.09.2025 16:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This, but also for "preview"

www.mrlacey.com/2024/02/why-...

02.09.2025 15:34 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I wish there was an easy way to reclaim disk space taken up by old, unneeded NuGet packages.

Does anyone have a better solution than deleting them all and redownloading them again when needed?

27.08.2025 10:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Congrats to all involved. (especially Michael)
I never imagined I'd be considered a 4-time hall of famer in anything.

27.08.2025 08:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

The next incremental improvement I'd like to see in LLM software creation is models based on quality over quantity.
That it generates code that is insecure or inefficient or unnecessarily complex or doesn't test the thing it claims to test hurts everyone, regardless of experience or level of "vibe".

19.08.2025 07:18 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
All time views: 3,000,960

All time views: 3,000,960

Crosse a threshold!

10.08.2025 13:49 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

In that it appears to use a RichTextBlock to render the response, it's worrying that content here can cause an app to crash.
Or is it when trying to generate the content it has an unhandled error?

09.08.2025 10:50 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I asked Microsoft Copilot a question in the desktop app but when it tries to display the response it generated it causes the app to crash. Repeatedly. Even in different machines.
Fortunately, I can view the response in a browser ok.

09.08.2025 10:50 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

You started "this is more of a comment than a question"
But you actually made an unjustified and unsubstantiated statement of you opinion.

07.08.2025 07:38 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Is [new] 'sample code' more for people or for LLMs to use as training data?
Does it matter?
What differences are useful or needed for these different audiences?

#ThinkingOutLoud

06.08.2025 08:01 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Grrr. I wanted to try something out.
I assumed "even if it doesn't work it'll make a good blog post"
I assumed wrong. The blog post would just be complaining about how hard something that should be simple is and how Copilot couldn't help.
Not blogging it to avoid upsetting people. :/

05.08.2025 15:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

based on old blog posts about improving WPF performance, I think they stopped optimizing launch time for a while. When they started again, it was after Win11 was out, and so they didn't include Windows 10-related optimizations.

30.07.2025 15:26 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

The upcoming lack of updates when it goes out of support is going to be the main reason for me.

30.07.2025 15:25 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If I had the time and inclination and I was only building for Windows, I'd explore using WinForms to show a loading screen and acting as a bootstrapper for loading an app built with another framework.

(More complex apps with many dependencies would load slower)

30.07.2025 15:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
graph of Windows app launch times for apps built with different frameworks and running on different versions of Windows - WPF apps on Win10 are 7-10 times slower than everything else.

graph of Windows app launch times for apps built with different frameworks and running on different versions of Windows - WPF apps on Win10 are 7-10 times slower than everything else.

If you needed another reason to get off Windows 10, how about app launch performance--specifically for apps built with WPF

Surprisingly, running on ARM isn't a guaranteed way to ensure that everything is faster. (But, ARM-based devices do have other benefits)

30.07.2025 15:20 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Youu0027re Gonna Be Ok

Youu0027re Gonna Be Ok

Interesting lyrics

#YoureGonnaBeOk

30.07.2025 08:22 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Dear anyone, have you ever heard the expression "please disconnect your line" in anything other than the start of an MS Teams call?
It still sounds weird to me but wondering if it's a cultural thing and a common phrase elsewhere..

25.07.2025 15:10 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Not sure if it's due to a presumed knowledge/authority or people too busy or the fields moving too fast to keep up with what others are doing/saying/thinking

25.07.2025 07:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Feeling a bit big headed but also disappointed.
Listening to lots of experienced developers on podcasts talking about AI with a faux-authority based on other experiences but no new ideas, 6-months behind the latest concepts, and some things that have been proven false.

25.07.2025 07:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I've just written some VBA!

It's like being back in the 90s

23.07.2025 15:54 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0