Solar is so back
Against my better judgment, I gave the solar sales guy at Home Depot my contact info. I’m glad I did, because it eventually led to me finding a deal from another company that will cut my electric bill in half.
Never Down, Always Up
Online home of Alan Johnson
Latest posts
My brain, on Ritalin
It has now been about 3 months since I started ADHD medication. I feel conflicted about accepting the idea that I need drugs to live my life , to put it as bluntly as possible. It makes me feel defective, or like I gave up. But this feeling is tiny compared to my sense of gratitude. Continue reading My brain, on Ritalin
Agentic coding growing pains
I had a tough week, a week ago. My manager pointed out some of the negative side effects of my aggressive adoption of agentic coding, prompting me to rethink how I'm approaching my work.
The AI Landslide Is Happening
When it comes to AI changing the tech world, we're at a juncture where you've either: - seen some shit with your own eyes or you believe your imagination of where this is going - or, you haven't and you're dubious Today, we don't have to agree. But not for long.
CDAP: a revolutionary way of working with AI agents
I have adopted a new way of taking on complex projects, and it is radically increasing my productivity. The idea is simple: I use documents as the shared canvas for collaboration between myself and chatbot sessions. The result is far more powerful than the sum of its parts. I call it chatbot+document-assisted projects, or CDAPs.
Brave new world: rethinking software development
We're in the midst of a massive pivot in the entire line of work of software development. At least in some places, like where I work, everything is different.
Took my first Ritalin, AMA
As a child of the 90s, it's a bit surreal to be taking Ritalin for the first time. However, as I came to understand the modern perspective of ADHD, I realized I pretty clearly have had it all along.
Truly persistent terminals in VSCode and Cursor
Thanks to a burst of motivation and a modern chatbot, I set up my IDEs to resume exactly where they left off when restarted.
You might actually need it
YAGNI--you ain't gonna need it--is the antidote to perfectionism. YAGNI comes from the observation that we are very bad at predicting the needs of the future. But every now and then, something you have held on to for years actually does come in handy.
$5 millionaire for a week: riches to rags in the startup world
For a few brief moments, my stock holdings in my former employer were hypothetically worth $5 million. This is the wild story of how I realized less than 1% of that value.