novatechflow | Alexander Alten

XRPayroll began as a simple XRP interface and quickly grew into a functional payroll prototype with user management, admin roles, API calls, and stablecoin support. This article explains how AI-assisted coding—using OpenAI’s code-generation models, successors of Codex—accelerated development, enabled rapid prototyping in Vue.js and SQLite, and demonstrated how blockchain-based payroll systems can be built efficiently with modern tooling. Until recently, I was skeptical about how much AI could contribute to real-world software development. Replacing developers? No. Assisting developers meaningfully? I had my doubts. But after building XRPayroll over the course of December, my perspective changed. AI didn’t just help—it dramatically accelerated the entire development cycle. What began as a simple idea for an XRP user interface quickly evolved into a functional application with user management, admin authentication, and basic role-based access control. Much of that progress ...

This post is about superposition and interference in simple, intuitive terms. It describes how quantum states combine, how probability amplitudes add, and why interference patterns appear in systems such as electrons, photons and waves. The goal is to give a clear, non mathematical understanding of how quantum behavior emerges from the rules of wave functions and measurement. If you’ve ever heard the words superposition or entanglement thrown around in conversations about quantum physics, you may have nodded politely while your brain quietly filed them away in the "too confusing to deal with" folder.  These aren't just theoretical quirks; they're the foundation of mind-bending tech like Google's latest quantum chip, the Willow with its 105 qubits. Superposition challenges our understanding of reality, suggesting that particles don't have definite states until observed. This principle is crucial in quantum technologies, enabling phenomena like quantum comp...

My upcoming novel,  Catalyst , is set in a world where AI is a major player in shaping the human future. I did some research into how AI is currently being used in software development and found that it has some amazing capabilities, but also some limitations that are a bit concerning. I'd even go so far as to say that those models are a bit of a hoax. They're impressive, but they don't actually solve anything. Yes, AI coding assistants like Devin and Copilot are impressive in demos and demo videos. In reality, they're not as powerful as you'd think, but they're great for simple tasks like crafting email parsing functions or authentication flows. However, I ran into some issues when I tried to use it in more complex situations. When I asked the AI to " write a connector from a database to ingest data into Spark ," it didn't understand and made mistakes. And that is a pure, simple and so well documented task that every non-coder could do that by sim...

When MySQL reaches its limits, scaling cannot rely on hardware alone. This article explains how strategic techniques such as caching, sharding and operational optimisation can drastically reduce load and improve application responsiveness. It outlines how in-memory systems like Redis or Memcached offload repeated reads, how horizontal sharding mechanisms distribute data for massive scale, and how tools such as Vitess, ProxySQL and HAProxy support routing, failover and cluster management. The summary also highlights essential practices including query tuning, indexing, replication and connection management. Together these approaches form a modern DevOps strategy that transforms MySQL from a single bottleneck into a resilient, scalable data layer able to grow with your application. When your MySQL database reaches its performance limits, vertical scaling through hardware upgrades provides a temporary solution. Long-term growth, though, requires a more comprehensive approach. This invo...

This article explains Amazon’s “working backwards” method and why product teams should start with the customer, not the feature list. By writing an internal press release before anything is built, teams clarify the real problem, the value proposition, and the customer benefit long before engineering begins. The exercise forces simplicity, removes jargon, prevents overbuilding, and keeps everyone aligned on what truly matters. If you can’t explain the product clearly in a short, compelling message, it’s a warning sign that the idea isn’t ready. Amazon often does this thing where they start with the customer instead of just coming up with a product and then trying to figure out how to sell it. They call it " working backwards. " This strategy totally works for any product decisions, but it's especially important when they're making something new. The Press Release Exercise When it comes to launching new stuff, product managers usually start by writing a press release...

PDFs are everywhere, but traditional search tools barely go beyond glorified Ctrl+F. This article explores how Large Language Models and Retrieval Augmented Generation can turn static PDF archives into an intelligent, contextual knowledge base that answers real questions instead of just returning files. It walks through a DIY setup built with langchain, transformers and FAISS that loads PDFs, chunks their content, embeds them into a vector store and then uses an LLM to answer questions grounded in the original documents. The result is a practical, self-hostable way to search and reason over your existing PDFs with far more nuance, less hallucination and a clear focus on useful, organisation-specific answers instead of abstract AI hype. PDFs are everywhere, seemingly indestructible, and present in our daily lives at all thinkable and unthinkable positions. We've all got mountains of them, and even companies shouting about "digital transformation" haven't managed to ...

Running Llama 3 locally on your MacBook gives you privacy, reliability and speed that the cloud often can’t. Instead of trusting flaky networks and remote servers with your ideas, you keep everything on your own machine, work offline without interruptions and get snappy responses from smaller, well-tuned models like Phi-3. With Ollama handling local model management and easy integration of Hugging Face GGUF models, you can spin up Llama 3 or custom models, tweak templates and experiment freely without cloud limits or surprise bills. For product ideation, this setup means you can brainstorm, prototype and refine deeply specific prompts and workflows in your own sandbox, on your own hardware, with full control over data and experience. I'm gonna be real with you: the Cloud and SaaS / PaaS is great... until it isn't. When you're elbow-deep in doing something with the likes of ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever, the last thing you need is your AI assistant starts choking (...

This article argues that modern product work is not about headcount, rituals or corporate theater, but about small, empowered teams building things customers actually care about. It uses a failed “big team equals importance” sustainability project as a cautionary tale and then lays out core principles for healthy product organisations: cross-functional teams, end-to-end ownership, flexible methodology, a crystal-clear vision, real empowerment instead of micromanagement, tight customer feedback loops, outcome-focused metrics and protecting team health. Drawing on Nike’s classic “our business is change” mindset and Spotify’s experimentation culture, it frames everything in the company as a product – from internal processes to customer experiences – and calls for ditching corporate bullshit in favour of customer-centric, experimental and courageous work that people truly love. If you're a product person, you know it's not just about the features. It's about building somethi...

Updated May 17, 2024 to fit M* architecture My favorite development environment on my MacBook includes an improved Zsh shell and an extended .vimrc configuration file with syntax highlighting, error checking, TextMate snippets, and the Solarized color scheme.  Here's a guide for setting up similar features:  The features include directional key navigation for directories and files, developer-friendly colors, command highlighting, improved history search, auto-complete for options and SSH connections (if keys are known), and many more useful enhancements.   Get Xcode:  AppStore => Xcode => Install Xcode From now we use a terminal window. Install Brew /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" Install git and wget:   brew install git   brew install wget Install oh-my-zsh:   wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh -O - | s...

This piece explains how generative AI has become a genuine accelerator for product ideation after years of underwhelming brainstorming tools. Instead of chaotic workshops dominated by loud voices or stale thinking, modern multimodal models like GPT-4o can surface unconventional ideas, emulate customer reactions, analyse markets, and help prototype concepts rapidly. Used well, AI becomes an “unfair advantage” for founders and product leaders by expanding creative range, grounding ideas in data, and sharpening strategic decisions. The article outlines a practical workflow — defining the problem, generating solutions, prototyping, and running devil’s-advocate analyses — plus a role-play method used successfully with Apache Wayang. The takeaway: AI doesn’t replace human judgment, but in a mature XOps culture it becomes a force multiplier that helps teams think clearer, move faster, and build better products. I like product ideation brainstorming—done right and focused,  it opens my ...

This article reframes XOps as a practical, collaborative mindset rather than another corporate buzzword. Drawing on experience as a CPO, it argues that breaking down silos between product, design, data and sales is essential for building user-centric products, especially in greenfield environments where culture forms early. XOps provides the glue: shared outcomes, cross-functional learning, data-driven decisions and fast experimentation. The piece outlines how each role contributes to a unified product engine, why collaboration reduces wasted effort and accelerates time-to-market, and how flexible deployment models—from embedded ProductOps to external consultants—help teams adopt the approach. The takeaway is clear: XOps succeeds only when leaders drive cultural change, champion honest feedback and reward collective impact. Done right, it becomes a strategic advantage that speeds delivery, reduces waste and creates happier, high-performing teams. First: XOps is not a new Marvell mov...