Posts Tagged with “Essays”
73 posts touching on Essays.
- Value Decides, Design Differentiates
People buy what they perceive as valuable, and design only tips the scale when perceived value between options is roughly equal.
- The comprehension debt
AI makes you faster but you might understand less of what you build. The long-term cost of that gap is still unclear.
- Keeping Taste Alive
Taste works like a metabolism, not a permanent acquisition. It requires constant fuel from both consumption and production.
- LLMs Are Not Conscious
LLMs reproduce a narrow slice of what minds do. They don't learn, remember, or act on their own.
- The Real Barrier to Fully Automated Software
Software creation stays heavily assisted, not fully automated, as long as a human carries responsibility for the outcome.
- The Real Bottleneck Is Not Review, It Is Reliability
AI code reviewers do not solve the core problem. Reliability and earned trust are what actually matter.
- You Can't Fix AI Reliability With More AI
Having one AI review another AI's work just pushes the problem further down without solving it.
- Software Engineering Can't Be Solved
Every solution creates new problems. The idea that software development will be "solved" misunderstands the nature of problems themselves.
- CLAUDE.md Is Not the Problem
The problem with CLAUDE.md is the same problem code comments have. Most of them are noise.
- LLMs can't introspect
Every LLM self-explanation is drawn from training data and prior tokens, same as everything else it says.
- AI gave us a faster brush
The joy of coding was never in writing code itself, but in solving problems and creating on an infinite canvas of bits.
- Agent-First Development and the Cloud Shift
When agents become the primary interface for building software, local machines become the bottleneck.
- The Biggest Misconception About LLMs
The simplest way to understand a large language model is this - it works like an extremely smart printer
- The Illusion of Software Automation
Productivity and output does not scale with token budgets as the bottleneck is (and remains) human comprehension.
- Learn to Code
Coders will take everyone else's jobs long before anyone takes theirs. AI amplifies software literacy more than it replaces it.
- The Comprehension Bottleneck
Generation has a clear target. Comprehension does not. That difference explains why AI accelerates one and barely touches the other.
- Why AI Won't Kill SaaS
AI makes building easier. That is exactly why you should not build.
- The Attention Trap
Organizations fail not from lack of effort, but from systematically focusing on what's easy to measure instead of what matters.
- Why Technical Skills Matter More in the Age of AI
AI amplifies vibe coders, but production reliability still belongs to engineers who know how things actually work.
- Two-stage AI calls for structured output
Unless latency is critical, use 2 AI calls to generate structured output.
- A major edge human coders have over AI is short-term memory in the form of intuition
Human developers build an intuitive cache for codebases that AI lacks, creating a significant advantage in development speed and understanding.
- Perceived Intelligence Is The Lowest Common Denominator
We may not see a big jump in perceived model intelligence from here.
- Perfection is the precursor to automation
You can’t disrupt a field by automating expertise because judging the automation also requires expertise.
- AI LLMs think out loud
If you don't see its thoughts, it isn't thinking. It's just recalling information.
- AI Honeymoon Phase
AI is undeniably a productivity boost, but there's many more bottlenecks to overcome
- AI gives devs more leverage
There's never been a better time to get into software engineering.
- Why Now is the Best Time to Learn to Code
AI turbocharges SWEs, but it's not a replacement for human developers
- How to Talk to GenAI
Great prompting is just good communication. Be clear, give context, and treat AI like a smart assistant, not a mind reader.
- There's never been a better time to learn to code
AI will unlock more dev jobs than ever before
- AI doesn't have to make you lazy
AI is a tool. It's up to you to use it to be lazy or not.
- AI Might Like 🍝 Code
Why AI systems might prefer what humans call "spaghetti code"
- AI is a tool, not a human
You need the same skills to use AI as you do to write code.
- AI tools will create more coders, not less
AI assistants do not displace coders, they amplify them.
- Hands-off Leadership Transition
The struggle of stepping back and trusting your team.
- AI and Knowledge Work
AI will not replace knowledge work, it will increase output / time.
- Learning to code is like learning a human language
Understanding the parallels between programming and human languages makes coding more approachable.
- How does an LLM perform actions?
The LLM doesn't perform actions itself; it facilitates the actions through textual commands.
- Why AI Won't Replace Developers
Focusing on AI replacing software engineering jobs is like focusing on the fact that a flood in your city will damage your house while ignoring the effect on the city as a whole.
- Threads vs Insta
How Threads improved upon Twitter's social dynamics by removing the following count from profiles.
- Network Effect vs Trend
Network effects participants increase utility, trend participants increase growth.
- You love what you become good at (even though you suck at it at first)
The path to our calling is far less obvious for most of us.
- Every output of an LLM is a hallucination
LLMs don't do anything different when they "make up" information because they always "make it up".
- Work Life Balance
Extraordinary results do require extraordinary effort but a happy life comes in many forms.
- Mastery
Success means ignoring your brain's persistent attempts to provide comfort in failure.
- Reading code like a human
One unique aspect of JavaScript I personally appreciate is its flexibility in function declarations.
- Everything humans do is natural
It's a silly, self-centered mind trick to call anything we do as "natural" or "unnatural".
- Coding skills will be more useful with AI, not less
Learning to code and becoming technical is more important in the age of AI, not less.
- LLMs are dreamers.
There's little relation between what an LLM says it can do and its actual capabilities.
- Art of Negotiation
Essential negotiation techniques to master
- Psychology of Manipulation
Key manipulation strategies to be aware of
- Learn the boring fundamentals
Understanding the fundamentals is key to mastering any subject.
- Coding jobs are safest from AI
If AI can replace coders, it can replace anyone.
- An issue with the AI paperclip optimizer theory
It's unlikely we'll give a monkey access to an AK47
- 2023 is start of AI augmentation, not replacement
In the near future, most jobs will get better and few will get replaced.
- Why can AI chatbots produce scary outputs?
Most written content about AI focuses on doomsday scenarios, and that's what the models learned from.
- ChatGPT in School
With the right mindset, ChatGPT gives you a superpower.
- Most ideas are recycled
Original thought is a unicorn.
- Short term happy is long term unhappy
Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.
- ChatGPT
If you can write English and think systematically, you can be a junior dev.
- A real verdict by an imaginary jury
What we imagine people think of us guides our self-esteem.
- Product Builder Perspective
Opinions on product building I've formed over the years
- There's no Us and Them
Ignoring or brushing over the opposing view creates a mental dishonesty.
- Neural Networks work but we don't know why
They work but we don't know why
- Following through
Action overcomes inertia. Consistent action compounds.
- Over-communication is far cheaper than the wrong direction.
As a default, it's better to repeat yourself when unnecessary than to risk not saying something that should be heard.
- Knowledge Checkpoints
Breadth is achievable through sequential units of depth.
- Coding principles
Some coding lessons I've learned over the years
- There're many ways to software craftsmanship
The path to competency is made up of many roads.
- Admire the distance, not the destination
The starting point, not the finish line, determines the level of success
- Learning by doing
True learning comes from understanding the journey taken towards an insight, not from the insight's factual existence.
- Random Remote Work Thoughts
Working remotely doesn't mean moving the same work habits out of the office. It's a fundamental shift in habits.
- Developing Async Sense in JavaScript
Part I - Sync vs Async, Threads and the Event Loop
- Anyone can learn anything
Anyone can learn anything and it's difficult for most of us.