My current goals and projects, as of February 2026:
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This goes without saying, but finish this semester. Ideally I also maintain my GPA, although this has proven to be the toughest semester yet. Currently, I'm taking Advanced SQL, NoSQL, Microprocessors and Embedded Systems, Application Security, Windows Network Programming, and Science Fiction as an elective. It has been quite the workload!
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Revamp my portfolio. Right now, my portfolio has been slowly transitioning away from my old goals of seeking an advanced degree in bioinformatics and focusing on bioinformatics toward my current web application and web design career.
Over the past year and a half studying software engineering, I have created and refined a note-taking system that I’ve found a lot of success with.
First, I use Obsidian to store all of my notes for every course in one vault. I take advantage of features such as Markdown formatting, vault-wide search, and internal vault links that act as a “wiki” of my notes, where I store all of my consolidated notes on a particular topic.
The Markdown files created in Obsidian map well as sources for NotebookLM, an AI research tool developed by Google. I use NotebookLM generate quizzes and study guides on my notes, saving me time so I can focus on testing myself for more effective studying.
In this blog post, I go more into detail of how exactly I set up Obsidian and use NotebookLM to help with my studying, as well as some considerations should you want to adapt my system.
Just some small site and life updates I want to share:
I've changed my website host to KnownHost. So far, the transition has been very smooth. I have been with x10Hosting for over a decade (!), although I've been meaning to migrate for a while now. For whatever reason, my website would take a good few seconds to load, regardless of caching. As soon as I switched hosts, my site has been loading as smooth as butter. I feel as if I've caught up with the modern era! ... Almost.
This is all to say my main domain is now vanesarobledo.com. However, I plan to make sure vanesa.robledo.ca redirects to the new domain.
As much as I wanted to update this blog more than once every few months, I have been very swamped with schoolwork. Software engineering has already had quite a bit of a workload, but it has picked up substantially! Between five intense courses, an elective (I opted to take Science Fiction), and looking for co-op jobs, I've had very little time to actually write. I've had a few drafts saved for months, along with a backlog of reading material. Thankfully, I've freed up time by securing a co-op position, so I hope to pick away at my side projects in between my assignments.
Hopefully I'll post more soon, although I suspect I won't until this semester ends.
Does LLM-assisted coding take the fun out of creating software?
With the advent of AI, deploying applications is more accessible than ever. Lacking knowledge of coding is no longer a barrier. Dubbed ‘vibe coding’, anyone can use LLMs to generate code and even deploy it by describing the project they want.
However, AI coding has not been perfected yet. The software built with LLM assistance from many inexperienced coders and non-technical people alike cost more money to fix than hiring a human, with services popping up to fix vibe-coded messes.
Despite this, many developers praise LLMs for taking out tedium in coding and debugging. They are easing more into roles of “AI babysitters”. AI has also enabled more experienced developers to ship more code, shipping more than half the amount than junior developers. From the survey in the linked article, this is because senior developers are more likely to spot errors. They also found that 80% of respondents said AI makes coding more enjoyable.
Ever since I was 10 years old, I've always had a personal space on the web to express myself. I was blogging since Wix was known as Freewebs, armed with rudimentary HTML/ CSS knowledge and an excessive amount of glitter graphics. Back then, Web 2.0 was starting to gain traction, HTML5 and CSS3 were starting to be introduced, and the most popular browser was Internet Explorer. Nowadays, I'm jealous of the newfangled techniques that make web design easier, some of which I'll be discussing later in this post.
Over a decade later, I decided to take up the personal website game again, with considerably less glitter. The reasons for this was numerous - to document my journey in studying software engineering, write about my myriad of interests, experiment with designing website layouts to my heart's content, and express myself.
The title of this blog - "Commonplace Book" - refers to the concept of keeping a notebook to collect information. Similarly, this blog will serve as a collection of interesting information as I come across it. I wanted it to be the ultimate place for me to post about all of my interests.