@amontalenti - Founder/CTO. Coding in: Python, JavaScript, Zig.
For years, every backend software engineering team I worked with struggled with one unavoidable bottleneck: turning working local code into live production reality. Running and debugging your code in the cloud was always slow, brittle, complex, and confusing. Often, it required total code rewrites into sophisticated frameworks to get the code to even run at Continue reading From laptop to cloud…
Here we are. 2026. A strange time for the tech industry. As I wrote in my prior post, It’s official: 2026 is a weird year for tech and programmers : In January, I wrote a draft of a blog post on this weird new coding world ever since the widespread adoption of Claude Code. I shared Continue reading Programming in 2026: excitement, dread, and the coming wave
I ve struggled to publish a 2026 essay that captures my headspace appropriately. It s not because of the blog chill, this time. It s because of AI/LLM tools. And not necessarily every AI/LLM tool. Claude Code, in particular. It s the combination of well-designed developer UX and powerful AI/LLM model behind it. It enables expert command-line tool use, Continue reading It s official: Claude Code…
Background: This is a post I put together as part of an annual ritual I started in 2023, documented in 2024, and continued in 2025: the smartphone app audit. This is where I use a phone upgrade or phone data migration as a moment to reflect on what apps I have installed on my phone Continue reading Less mindless scrolling, less mindless listening
I m fortunate that I got a high school education in a US public school system built during a period of post-WW2 abundance — when we invested in the future. I feel doubly fortunate that I attended NYU when a college education was seen as a universal good. I remember that post-9/11 politics in the US Continue reading Hypernormalization and distrust
In my last post, I discussed how I upgraded to a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 11 laptop (rtings.com review) as my primary Linux workstation. For years, I ve worked from my Linux laptop (usually a Lenovo X1 carbon) on the go. I ve been spending more time recently working on the go, outside of my office, for Continue reading My tricks and accessories for working ergonomically on a laptop while on the go
One of my favorite old Linux jokes is, Linux is free if your time is worthless. This quote is possibly adapted from a jwz interview dating back to 1998. In it, he said: I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to [major operating systems], and because, of all the operating Continue reading Linux is free and your mind is valuable
In 2017, CrashPlan was one of the most popular full-computer offsite/cloud backup tools for consumers. It had millions of paid users, usually paying around $10/month for a few terabytes of offsite storage. But then On August 22, 2017, Code42 announced they were shutting down CrashPlan for Home, effective in October 2018. They were not accepting Continue reading Linux backup workflow for hackers…
I m glad to say that the last few months have been a return to the world of day-to-day coding and software craftsmanship for me. To give a taste of what I ve been working on, I m going to take you on a tour through some damn good Python software I ve been using day-to-day lately. Python 3 Continue reading Good Python Software
I have a long relationship with digital media. I ve been blogging for decades. I ve been a news junkie forever. And I started a startup in the real-time and historical content analytics space (Parse.ly) that ended up shipping a widely-used product in the industry. What s more, Parse.ly s network-wide data (billions of online news reading sessions every Continue reading My relationship with digital…
The unexamined life is not worth living. This famous quote comes from the history of philosophy, supposedly said by Socrates, as recounted by Plato, in his Apology. Over the years, however, this quote has also become a kind of aphorism, suggesting that philosophy that is, discussions around the ideas of historical and modern philosophers Continue reading The Partially Examined Life: a podcast, a…
I recently upgraded from a Google Pixel 7 to a Pixel 8 phone. Nothing earth shattering about this upgrade. Incremental. Performance smartphones, as the DOJ recently called iPhones and high end Androids, have leveled off in core functionality. The Pixel 8 is slightly smaller than the Pixel 7, which makes me happy, as I treat Continue reading The smartphone app audit
When I describe my programming background these days, I say that I code “primarily in Python, JavaScript, Clojure, C… and Zig!” I put Python first in that list for good reason. This is a post about the core Python language, but also the ways in which Python is evolving its single-core and multi-core CPU performance. Continue reading Core Python
When you type an address into your web browser and are brought to a web server, a lot of decentralized magic happens within the span of a few seconds. Through the web, we have an infinite media available to us. It as though you have a beautifully-maintained bookshelf and run your finger along the spines Continue reading Putting Your Media on a Diet
The film The Big Chill came out a bit before I was born, over 40 years ago, in 1983. The plot focuses on a group of middle-aged friends, perhaps in their late 30s and early 40s, who had attended the University of Michigan Ann Arbor together. They reunite after 15 years, brought together by Continue reading The Blog Chill
Sam Altman once said: Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most are at it. Get rid of distractions in your life. Develop very strong ways to avoid letting crap pile up. In programming, there is a technique called Continue reading Dependency rejection
This section of Brave New World Revisited, a long essay by Aldous Huxley reflecting on his own novel many years after its publication, can be found on Project Gutenberg Canada; if you enjoy it, I recommend you purchase Brave New World Brave New World Revisited, which includes the original novel (1932) and Huxley’s essay Continue reading Over-Organization (1958)
A few years back, I published The Elements of Python Style, a popular Python code style guide. Since publishing it, friends of mine in the Python community have wondered if I might consider adding a section about package installation, dependency management, and other similar standard tooling recommendations. This is a reasonable request, since Python lacks Continue reading How Python programmers…
When I turned 27, I wrote the following in my birthday post: I don’t need stuff. I just need time. Of course, that’s the bittersweet part of one’s birthday. That even as you come to realize the importance of time, the day acts as a reminder of how our time on this earth is limited. Continue reading Turning n/2 + 1
In 2009, I quit my first programming job after college to work on a startup. That startup eventually became Parse.ly. I’ve written about Parse.ly s startup beginnings and evolution elsewhere on this blog, including: “The Startup Diet” “What One Does” “Startups: Not for the faint of heart” “Why Startups Die” “Shipping the Second System” It is Continue reading Parse.ly, Automattic: the long view
I m always surprised to learn that a friend who has used Linux for a long time, in both server and desktop contexts, might not have heard of GNU parallel. If you use GNU parallel together with pv (pipe viewer), UNIX shell pipelines, and Python fileinput module, you get a pretty powerful parallel job running framework Continue reading GNU parallel is underrated
Frederick Brooks once wrote: The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. In his classic essay, No Silver Bullet , he also wrote about software s essential complexity: The complexity of software is an essential property [ ] Hence, descriptions Continue reading Managing software…
It s not a left or a right thing. It s about jobs and health. If you study the data, you ll learn this is what s at stake in 2020. We can restore our country s health. We can rebuild our economy. We can do both of these things. There is a precedent for this. To learn more behind Continue reading New essay: The case for a vote to restore jobs and health
A few years back, I wrote Clojonic: Pythonic Clojure, which compares Clojure to Python, and concluded: My exploration of Clojure so far has made me realize that the languages share surprisingly more in common than I originally thought as an outside observer. Indeed, I think Clojure may be the most “Pythonic” language running on the Continue reading Learning about babashka (bb), a minimalist…
James Bennett, a long-time Python developer, blogger, and contributor to Django, recently wrote a nice post about the end of Python 2.x, entitled Variations on the Death of Python 2. It s a great read for anyone who, like me, has been in the Python community a long time. I ve been a Python user since the Continue reading Python 3 is here and the sky is not falling
If you’re working on a fully distributed team, partially remote team, or even just working from home occasionally, this is a selection of low-cost equipment you can use to get your home office setup to a “professional” level. All of this equipment has been tested extensively to work on: Google Hangouts Google Meet Zoom Video Continue reading Best remote work equipment in 2020
Have you been trying to figure out this new world order with regard to work-from-home (WFH), remote work, distributed teams, and the like? I ve opened up my calendar for 30-minute chats. You can schedule them with me here: https://calendly.com/amontalenti/distributed Update: after over a year, I ve now shut down this link on May 27, 2021 Continue reading Chat with me for 30 minutes about…
Do you ever get that feeling like no matter how hard you work, you just can t keep up? This isn t a problem uniquely faced by modern knowledge workers. It s also a characteristic of certain software systems. This state — of being perpetually behind on intended work-in-progress — can fall naturally out of the data structures Continue reading Work is a Queue of Queues
In the last few months, I have learned a lot about modern JavaScript and CSS development with a local toolchain powered by Node 8, Webpack 4, and Babel 7. As part of that, I am doing my second “re-introduction to JavaScript”. I first learned JS in 1998. Then relearned it from scratch in 2008, in Continue reading JavaScript: The Modern Parts
Here s how Parse.ly s original 2009 logo looked: Parse.ly has some fun startup lore from its early days about how we acquired this logo. I wrote about this in a post entitled, Parse.ly: brand hacking : Our first Parse.ly logo was designed as a trade for another domain I happened to own. It was the dormant domain Continue reading Parse.ly s brand refresh