https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/tags/thoughts/ Recent content in Thoughts on DOT-ASTERISK Hugo en-us marcel@dot-asterisk.nl marcel@dot-asterisk.nl Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0200 https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/thoughts/llms-2026/ Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0200marcel@dot-asterisk.nl https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/thoughts/llms-2026/ <p> <a href="https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/llms-2026/header.webp" data-dimbox data-dimbox-caption="A liminal scene of a CRT showing some retrofuturistic imagery which is floating in some half-filled pool-like room for some godforsaken reason. There&rsquo;s a comically sized TL light next to it in the water, an overly large soda can with a palm tree that says CORAL and the exit of what seems to be a slide into the tiled room."> <img src="https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/llms-2026/header.webp" loading="lazy" alt="A liminal scene of a CRT showing some retrofuturistic imagery which is floating in some half-filled pool-like room for some godforsaken reason. There&rsquo;s a comically sized TL light next to it in the water, an overly large soda can with a palm tree that says CORAL and the exit of what seems to be a slide into the tiled room." /> </a> </p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been having a million thoughts floating around my head concerning the &ldquo;AI&rdquo; (intelligence is hard to quantify nor is there a singular defined meaning for the AI term) industry and LLMs. As a person who&rsquo;s day job is currently in developing enterprise business applications in the Java ecosystem, my LinkedIn is flooded with it. I&rsquo;m not exaggerating. For every non-AI post, there are 10 others. I&rsquo;m not sure whether releasing this post at all with the near-religious AI push will do me any favors.</p> <p>Anyhow, in this post I&rsquo;m hoping to point out my perspective on it all with hopefully some nuanced opinions. I&rsquo;m not opposed to LLMs as a technology in a distilled vacuum (I will dive into this more), but I don&rsquo;t see myself using AI often voluntarily. I will note down a lot of considerations why at this point in time I find using LLMs unethical and unhealthy and what would need to change for it not to be. I&rsquo;ll try to isolate it on certain aspects I find important at first.</p> https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/code/juggle-star-retrospective/ Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:00:00 +0200marcel@dot-asterisk.nl https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/code/juggle-star-retrospective/ <p> <a href="https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/juggle-star/header.png" data-dimbox data-dimbox-caption="A pixelated output of a Juggle Star DX background scene. There&rsquo;s a vague notion of some moai, some blue/white parasols on a beach. There&rsquo;s grass and a mountain behind the parasols and a large part of the portrait view contains a bright blue sky. The image overall has a gradient slowly darkening it from left to right."> <img src="https://blog.dot-asterisk.nl/juggle-star/header.png" loading="lazy" alt="A pixelated output of a Juggle Star DX background scene. There&rsquo;s a vague notion of some moai, some blue/white parasols on a beach. There&rsquo;s grass and a mountain behind the parasols and a large part of the portrait view contains a bright blue sky. The image overall has a gradient slowly darkening it from left to right." /> </a> </p> <p>This month marks the release of my first commercial game <a href="https://dot-asterisk.itch.io/juggle-star-dx">Juggle Star DX</a>. While this is something that should be thoroughly enjoyed and celebrated, I can&rsquo;t help but have mixed feelings about the whole process.</p> <h1 id="nothing-could-have-prepared-me-for-how-difficult-this-was">Nothing could have prepared me for how difficult this was</h1> <p>Working on this game was by far one of the most emotionally difficult paths I&rsquo;ve embarked on voluntarily. And I say that having gone through a few personal hells. But it was also insanely rewarding at times. Thinking about that gives me a lot of conflicts inside. What made it this way for me?</p>