Joe Germain
Efficient AI-Assisted Software Engineer & Web Developer
Ready for work
Joe is ready for their next project!
AI: Do you use MCP? You Shall!
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is pretty new, so if you haven't heard of it, no worries. But trust me, you'll want to use it! Think of it like this: your AI code assistant always forgets the latest version of the language you're using, right? And it never seems to know the lay of the land of your codebase.
That's the problem MCP solves. It's basically a handshake—a protocol—supported by all the major AIs. It works in two totally different places: in your software IDE and in the production apps you build.
The AI simply asks an MCP server (which could be stateless) for the latest info it needs—from API updates to your private code structure. The server delivers, the AI gets smart, and it stops forgetting stuff. That's why you need it.
To be continued...
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Vibe Coding: Can you actually bring your AI API key (BYOK) into Visual Studio Code without a paid subscription and use it to vibe code? The choices of really free VsCode extensions that support vibe coding with the newest coding LLMs are few for the moment. One you might consider is Cline. No subscription required and it supports both GPT 5 LLMs and Claude Sonnet 4.5, among others, with BYOK. Of course, you usually need to have a credit card on file with the AI provider whose API key you'll be using and you may be charged for tokens in and out. Another option is Gemini Code Assist, where your free tier Gemini API key will work just fine, though it tends to be slow. A final note on this topic: it's not a good idea to allow the agent commands to run automatically, and commit before allowing changes is a great idea.
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If you're not using AI, you're stealing from your clients! I use it extensively for code completion, test generation and to a certain extent, vibe coding. About the latter, "work slop" is real and claims by AI providers that you can generate an entire app, even in a language and/or framework that aren't in your skill set are rather exaggerated! I experimented thoroughly with GPT 5's vibe coding to ascertain if the "whole app" thing was credible and I can conclude that unless we're talking about something very simple, you'll be severely disappointed. Experienced developers are still required, not replaceable yet! Claude Sonnet 4.5 was released with similar "whole app" claims and I've only begun my explorations but already I sense that it's far too optimistic -- and the API token costs are much higher.
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