Patryk Żurek

Hey all ;)

It's been a while since my last blog post. I wanted to share some updates on my life and the projects I've been working on.

Orion Touch Bar Patch

I recently switched browsers from Firefox to Orion. The decision was mostly due to how Firefox has been getting slower and slower over the recent times. And while Orion feels much smoother, it does use way more RAM (unless I'm the one doing something wrong?).

What I was most disappointed by was that Orion doesn't have Touch Bar support on macOS. I looked around and found that I'm not the only one complaining about this. So I decided to make a small helper app that adds Touch Bar support to Orion. It's called Orion Touch Bar Patch.

The app runs in the background and adds a Touch Bar with back, forward, reload buttons and more (all customizable). The implementation is far from a perfect native (as in, implemented inside Orion) solution, but it's something to use in the meantime.

It's written in Swift and heavily utilizes AppleScript in the background. It works on macOS 13 and newer, however I would love to bring it to lower macOS versions too (where Orion is still available). It's very hacky on the inside, even resorting to using a private API. You can find the source code on GitHub, and I welcome ALL contributions or suggestions for improvements. This is 1.0 after all.

...and yes, I know that the Touch Bar is dead and Apple has removed it from its newest lineup of laptops, but I extensively use it and I think it's a shame that Apple removed it. Every time I need to write a lot of text, I tend to use my MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and a butterfly keyboard (mindblowing, I know), simply because it feels more comfortable to type on than any other keyboard/possible setup I have laying around.

#BringBackTheTouchBar

Argumentum - a sort of a teaser for what's to come!

I'm also working on a new app called Argumentum. It's a quiz app (essentially a Kahoot clone) that allows you to create and play quizzes in a computer lab environment (local network). The entire idea for the app came from my teacher, who simply asked me if I could write something like this for our school. He was previously using Batch files for his quizzes (yes, really), but he wanted an actual app, and not just a dumb script.

I actually made an attempt at making this a year ago, but it was a complete disaster. I first wrote a simple prototype of this app using Electrobun before it even went 1.0, which meant unimaginable amounts of bugs and crashes (which is on me for using an unfinished piece of software). I couldn't package the app properly for Windows (which is the main target platform) and had to rely on my handmade wonky scripts. After I brought that prototype to class, it refused to launch properly on half of the computers.

Then, after realizing I had wasted a few hours of my precious time, I let an agent vibecode the port to Electron with mediocre results. The app was working and all the pieces were there, but it was really nothing to be proud of. It was very sluggish on the school computers, and generally just felt AI-sloppy. I sort of lost interest in the app at that point.

HOWEVER, I've come back to the idea a few weeks ago, after ambitiously deciding to learn Qt and C++. I really want to stay away from web dev as much as possible, as I don't really see a future for myself with it. My dream was always to write desktop apps, and Electron is not a solution for that.

And I gotta say, Qt is one of the nicest frameworks (if you can even call it that, my webdev-fried brain...) I've ever used. The documentation is insanely good, and it feels amazing to develop apps with. Everything just makes sense.

So, in short: I'm working on a C++/Qt, cross-platform, local-networking-powered Kahoot clone. I'll share a separate blog post about it + a GitHub repo, detailing the entire thing later on, when things are more finalized. I think it might be useful outside of my school too. It's built to be very customizable and universal to many teaching scenarios from the ground up.

Life Update

I'm back in school for my last year of high school. I have my Matura exams this school year, which is a big deal in Poland. I have to say, I'm really excited about it. I feel like I've grown a lot over the past few years, and I'm ready to take on this challenge.

I decided to pick these subjects for my Matura exams:

• Computer Science (Extended Level),
• English (Extended Level),
• Polish (Standard Level),
• Geography (Extended Level),
• and Math (Standard Level).

I've also been thinking a lot about studying abroad if my exams work out well. It's a very scary and big decision, but I'm definitely gonna apply no matter what my possible chances are (even if I don't end up going).

Studying abroad for me equals huge student debts and reliance on as many scholarships and financial aid options as I can get. Even studying here in Poland (where higher education itself is free) is gonna be a challenge for me, as I wanna move out to a bigger city (for better opportunities), which comes with a massive cost of living. But hopefully I can get some part-time job to sustain myself!

I also haven't really decided on my major yet. I would really love to do Software Engineering combined with some kind of Design class/course. In the end, I would love to work on big pieces of software such as operating systems. It has been my dream since I was little.

I'm also writing the extended geography exam, so another option is geoinformatics? I think that's pretty cool, but I'm not sure how employable that is.

I'm scared

AI is taking over the world (duh). And I feel like I need to put in 5x more effort into everything to stand out from it (by any means necessary).

I'm also not sure whether or not I should use AI that much when building stuff like Argumentum (where I'm learning something new). Maybe it's better to lay down the foundations yourself with a mediocre result and then work with AI on improving it? Or just slowly build the app together with an agent from the ground up, which will for sure save time and headaches.

I don't want to reject AI like all those FOSS people (see the recent Flatpak drama), as I think that's definitely slowing down progress in an already very slow process. It's a matter of using the tool responsibly, but will my future employer care about that? Or will they just give me thousands worth of tokens and expect results that a human simply can't produce?

I'm obviously gonna try going the responsible route, but it's really tough going that way nowadays.

I've seen a surge of Millennials/Gen Z and even boomers using some AI tools to make websites/software for themselves and then discrediting the job and art of software development. At this point, I'm still going the software dev route, simply because I have the passion for it.

If I was here for the money, I think I would need to change career choices.

And while obviously this is a healthy decision (as in following your passion, not money), I'm scared that with how good AI is getting, and how more and more people are avoiding learning the actual fundamentals of computing and software engineering, the job market will become stagnant. With just AI agents running around and building apps for us with prompts.

Obviously, there will be a niche (and hopefully expensive market) for human software engineers who write code the old-fashioned way!

Conclusion

So yeah, that's pretty much where I am right now.

I've got a few projects in the works, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do after school, and I'm simultaneously trying not to completely lose my mind over AI taking over everything.

I'm really excited about Argumentum and what it could eventually become, and I'm also happy that I'm finally getting back into making the kind of software I've always wanted to make. Maybe it won't become anything huge, and maybe I'll change directions completely in a few years, but right now I'm just enjoying the process.

The next few months are probably going to be pretty chaotic with Matura, university applications, and everything else going on, but I'm looking forward to seeing where it all takes me.

And who knows, maybe I'll still be writing desktop software in ten years. Hopefully with Touch Bar support.

I'm probably gonna be more offline for the next few months, but I'll try to post updates on my projects and life as much as I can. I've really enjoyed writing this blog post, and I hope you enjoyed reading it too. Thanks for sticking around, and I'll see you in the next one <3

Patryk