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Hoard things you know how to do

sourceSimon Willison
calendar_todayFebruary 26, 2026
schedule2 min read
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Maximize Your Coding Efficiency by Hoarding Solutions

Summary

The article discusses the importance of hoarding coding solutions and examples to enhance productivity when working with coding agents. It emphasizes the value of having a repository of knowledge to solve complex problems effectively.

Key Points

  • The author advocates for collecting solutions to coding problems as a key asset for software professionals.
  • Examples of questions to consider include running OCR in JavaScript or processing large JSON files in Python.
  • The author maintains over a thousand GitHub repositories filled with proof-of-concept code.
  • Tools like Tesseract.js and PDF.js are highlighted as resources for building a browser-based OCR tool.
  • The article mentions the use of coding agents to combine existing solutions into new tools, enhancing productivity.
  • The author cites a successful project where a coding agent was used to create a PDF to image converter with integrated OCR functionality.
  • The significance of coding agents is emphasized, as they can leverage documented examples to solve similar problems in the future.

Analysis

The article underscores a practical approach for IT professionals to build a personal knowledge base that can be leveraged by coding agents. This strategy not only saves time but also fosters innovation by enabling the combination of existing solutions to tackle new challenges.

Conclusion

IT professionals should prioritize creating and maintaining a repository of coding solutions and examples. This practice will enhance their efficiency and empower coding agents to produce innovative solutions based on documented knowledge.