A Throwaway Hello World: Devstral Small in Action

Sometimes, the best way to demonstrate a powerful development environment is with something small and simple. That's exactly what we did when we created a throwaway Hello World Python web service. But don't let the simplicity fool you - this was a full Cline development session with rich temporal memory bank and extensive software engineering prompting.

The Throw-Away Project

The task was clear: create a minimal Python web service that responds with "Hello World". It's the kind of thing you might create to test out a new framework or just for fun. And that's exactly what it was - but we approached it with the same seriousness and methodical thinking that we apply to our biggest projects.

Baby Steps™ in Action

Even for this small project, we followed the Baby Steps™ philosophy:

  1. Create Project Structure: First, we created a new folder containers/oneshot and set up the basic files.
  2. Implement Web Service: Next, we wrote a simple Flask app that serves "Hello World" at the root endpoint.
  3. Add Makefile: Finally, we created a Makefile to make running the service easy.

Each step was small and focused, but together they created a complete, working web service. This is the power of Baby Steps™ - breaking down even simple tasks into manageable pieces makes the process more enjoyable and less error-prone.

The Power of the Environment

Here's what made this special: even though it was a throwaway project, we used our full-featured Cline development environment. This isn't just about running a simple Python script; it's about having access to:

  • Rich temporal memory bank that remembers all our previous work
  • Extensive software engineering patterns and best practices
  • Powerful AI assistance for coding, debugging, and documentation

AI Collaboration

One of the most interesting aspects of this project was that we used "Devstral Small 2507 bf16" not just to create the application, but also to write this blog post about it. This consistency demonstrates how reliable and powerful our AI tools have become - they're not just for coding, but for all aspects of the development workflow.

The Lesson

This throwaway project serves as a reminder that:

  1. Even simple tasks benefit from methodical approaches
  2. Our development environment is powerful enough to handle any project, no matter how big or small
  3. The Baby Steps™ philosophy works at every scale

So next time you're tempted to dismiss a small project as "not worth the effort", remember that sometimes the simplest demonstrations can reveal the most about our tools and processes.