My Notes on Three Years of Coding with AI
A non-hype version of what daily AI-assisted coding actually looks like after three years, written like a conversation over coffee.
Who is Mike Zornek?
Hello! My name is Mike Zornek. I describe myself as both a developer and teacher, and I've been building digital products for over 25 years.
From the suburbs of Philadelphia, I code in Elixir . When I am not coding, I enjoy watching Phillies baseball and playing video games (mostly laid-back simulations and RPGs).
Start Here
New here? Here are some quality posts to get you started.
Personal Elixir Code Aesthetics
A tour of some small personal choices behind clean, readable Elixir code I strive for.
Phoenix LiveView: Presenting DateTime in User's Time Zone
A concrete walk through a real Phoenix problem: showing timestamps in each reader's own time zone.
What is Local-first Software?
Why data ownership and offline-friendly software matter to me, and where local-first is heading. It's a problem space I'm digging into right now.
My Standup Format
The simple async standup format I've leaned on for years to keep a team honest, human, and unblocked.
Recent Blog Posts
Building LocalCents: A Local-first Expense Tracker with Automerge CRDTs
An educational side project: a local-first expense tracker built with Automerge CRDTs in Elixir, Phoenix, and Tauri, plus how I surface sync conflicts.
Who Fills the Sprint? My 45/45/10 Split
Every sprint is a tug-of-war between the roadmap and the work that keeps the lights on. Here is the 45/45/10 split I plan against, and why.
Celebrating New Journaling Habits
A couple of new habits have stuck: weekly planning, and a signal log to track where my consulting outreach lands.
An Agent Skill for Updating Elixir Dependencies
What agent skills are, and a walkthrough of the one I lean on to update Elixir dependencies and open a documented pull request.
Shimming Your Way Off a Dead Elixir Dependency
An abandoned dependency was blocking a major upgrade I needed. Here are the two ways I retire one, and when a shim beats a big-bang rewrite.
Guarding Against AI Drift: My Automated Elixir Quality Checks
I have hardened LocalCents with more automated Elixir quality checks than I have ever run. The whole guardrail setup, wired in a real repo.
My Notes on Three Years of Coding with AI
Notes on how my use of AI has changed over three years, and what's working and what isn't inside LocalCents.