> The biggest lesson I take is that "social networks" are not about protocols but about how we use the existing infrastructure.
It's also not about scale and breadth. Focused social networks around niches can be a breath of fresh air compared to the social behemoths. I joined a couple of more targeted social networks recently and it seems like there's a far more positive community when people have a shared interest. Fable[1] has a social network for reading and that has a generally positive and cosy vibe. Bryan Johnson's Don't Die[2] app is focused on health and longevity and it has a supportive atmosphere. You'd think that something like Reddit with its many niche subreddits would be able to replicate this. But it seems like Reddit has its own tone that permeates everywhere.
It seems like social networks that stay small and focused can maintain a fun and productive environment that degrades over time in larger networks.
That's a really good point. And I agree that kind of confidence in craftsmanship is something that's missing from agentic coding today... it does make slop if you're not careful with it. Even though I've learned how to guide agents, I still have some uneasiness about missing something sloppy they have done.
But then it makes me ask if the agents will get so good that craftsmanship is a given? Then that concern goes away. When I use Go I don't worry too much about craftsmanship of the language because it was written by a lot of smart people and has proven itself to be good in production for thousands of orgs. Is there a point at which agents prove themselves capable enough that we start trusting in their craftsmanship? There's a long way to go, but I don't think that's impossible.
Yes! Good points! I think what I meant for point 1 was more "outputting something" vs "creating something". In my mind that encompasses materializing something into the world to achieve whatever you wanted, whether you were aiming to help others, solve a problem you alone have, or scratch some other sort of itch. It's about achieving some end. And helping somebody can be achieved indirectly and still be satisfying.
The inherent value of creating is something I was missing. Solving puzzles might be part of that, but not all. It's the classic Platonic question about how we value actions: for their own sake, for their results, or for both.
I think we agree that coding can be both, and it sounds like you feel the value for its own sake is lackluster in agentic coding -- It's just too easy. And I think that's the core sliding scale: Do you value creation more for its own sake or for its results? Where you land on that spectrum probably influences how people feel about agentic coding.
That being said, I also think that agentic coding can give enough of a challenge to scratch the itch of intrinsic value of creating. To a certain degree I think it's about moving up the abstraction chain to work more on architecture and product design. Those things can be fun and rewarding too. But fundamentally it's a preference.
That's interesting. I have been thinking about how the vastly different reactions people seem to have to agentic coding could be influenced by what they value about coding. To me it seems like there are three joys in coding:
1. Creating something
2. Solving puzzles
3. Learning new things
If you are primarily motivated by seeing a finished product of some sort, then I think agentic coding is transcendent. You can get an output so much quicker.
If your enjoyment comes from solving hard puzzles, digging into algorithms, how hardware works, weird machine quirks, language internals etc... then you're going to lose nearly all of that fun.
And learning new things is somewhere in the middle. I do think that you can use agentic coding to learn new technologies. I have found llms to be a phenomenal tool for teaching me things, exploring new concepts, and showing me where to go to read more from human authors. But I have to concede that the best way to learn is by doing so you will probably lose out on some depth and stickiness if you're not the one implementing something in a new technology.
Of course most people find joy in some mix of all three. And exactly what they're looking for might change from project to project. I'm curious if you were leaning more towards 2 and 3 in your recent project and that's why you were so unsatisfied with Claude Code.
I think coding can be an endurance sport sometimes. There are a lot of points at which you have to bang your head against a wall for hours or days to figure out the smallest issue. Having an agent do that frustrating part definitely lowers the endurance needed to stay productive on a project.
Same! After years in engineering management I'm building so many small side projects thanks to Claude Code. I'm creating at a breakneck pace. Claude Code has mostly raised the level of abstraction so I can focus much more on the creative aspect of building which has been so much fun.
There are definitely a lot of limitations with Claude Code, but it's fun to work through the issues, figure out Claude's behavior, and create guardrails and workarounds. I do think that a lot of the poor behavior that agents exhibit can be fixed with more guardrails and scaffolding... so I'm looking forward to the future.
As somebody who used em-dashes a lot pre-ChatGPT, I have genuinely struggled with feeling I should change my writing style to appear more human. I would be happy with a double dash--but many programs autocorrect that to a full em-dash. So I'm left anxious that people will think I find them so unimportant I have offloaded communication with them to an LLM. So this post resonated with me.
I also like Will's "em-dash disclosure" on his about page:
> I like em dashes (—), en dashes (–), and hyphens (-), and I know how to type them. I also enjoy a well-placed ellipsis, but I didn’t know how to type one… until now. I believe that footnotes and sidenotes are superior to endnotes, appreciate the occasional fleuron, and at one point in my life, I knew what a colophon was.
> All of this is to say: the words, punctuation marks, misspellings, and opinions on this site are my own.
I have noticed that my writing ability has atrophied since I was writing essays in school. Now at work most of my writing is slack messages. Writing longer more thoughtful pieces about strategy or performance review has become a slog. I suspect that a lot of people have had a similar experience so offloading the pain of writing to an LLM is appealing.
But frankly LLMs suck at writing. It's not only formulaic, it's uninspired!! So I worry that we're entering an era of mediocre writing. I like the "Have you considered writing?" suggestion. I've been trying to make a habit of writing book reviews so I can counter some of the writing atrophy I've developed. Hopefully it will help me become a better thinker too. As Ray says here: "Understanding your own point of view is an enriching exercise."
I have been using Tauri for a macOS app I'm making[1] and it has been great. The app is only 11MB and I've had most of the APIs I'd need.
However, there are still some rough edges that have been annoying to work with. I think for my next project I will actually go back to electron. There are two issues that caused me pain:
1. I can't use Playwright to run e2e tests on the tauri app itself. That's because the webview doesn't expose the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and the tauri-driver [2] does not work on MacOS.
2. Security Scoped Resources aren't fully implemented which means if a user gets the app through the app store the app won't be able to remember file permissions between runs [3]. It's not too much of an issue since I probably won't release it on the app store, but still annoying.
But I hope Tauri continues to grow and we start seeing apps use it more.
If you're interested on a dive into building game engines, I've enjoyed some of Cherno's videos [1] on developing his game engine Hazel [2][3]. It's cool to see the amount of work that has to go into building an engine. I believe Noel when he says building games without a commercial engine is more fun - there's a lot of fascinating optimizations and tricks at the engine layer.
Being made "redundant" isn't just an synonym for being fired. It has a specific legal meaning in the UK [1]. When employees are made redundant they are entitled to certain rights including statutory redundancy pay [2]. So it's not just a euphemism in UK contexts. And yes this is normal phrasing in the UK.
An interesting question about Stop Killing Games is if this should apply to software more broadly. If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? There isn't as strong an argument for this since most software is structured like a SaaS rather than a one time purchase. But it's considerate when companies do this, e.g. Facebook open sourcing Parse Server was better than outright discontinuing it.
No, they do not want to force publishers to keep a game online. The initiative just wants developers to provide a way for users to keep using a game after it has gone EOL by allowing users to run their own servers or by no longer requiring internet access.
See the FAQ[1]:
> Aren't you asking companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic?
> A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as:
> 'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony
> 'Knockout City' published by Velan Studios
> 'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom
> 'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB
> 'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment
I'm not sure what the question "What does it have to do with democracy?" is referring to. Some people find that no longer having access to video games they paid for isn't fair so are petitioning their governments for consumer protection against that.
Desktop Commander is new to me so I'll check it out. I'm excited for these kinds of coworking tools that have a lot of leeway to act on systems more broadly. I have been using Claude to create spreadsheets and documents for various tasks and it has been quite helpful. Claude has an "add to Google Drive" button for files so I was hoping I could have Claude edit files in my Drive too but it looks like that isn't possible unfortunately.
I'm particularly excited for when the models are capable (and safe) enough to be more autonomous and persistent. A lot of these tools still have a human in the loop. It seems like we've gotten a taste of that with OpenClaw but there's so much more potential.
It's also not about scale and breadth. Focused social networks around niches can be a breath of fresh air compared to the social behemoths. I joined a couple of more targeted social networks recently and it seems like there's a far more positive community when people have a shared interest. Fable[1] has a social network for reading and that has a generally positive and cosy vibe. Bryan Johnson's Don't Die[2] app is focused on health and longevity and it has a supportive atmosphere. You'd think that something like Reddit with its many niche subreddits would be able to replicate this. But it seems like Reddit has its own tone that permeates everywhere.
It seems like social networks that stay small and focused can maintain a fun and productive environment that degrades over time in larger networks.
[1] https://fable.co/
[2] https://dontdieapp.com/