Software engineer and founder of Sancho Studio in New York. I help companies make better technical decisions, faster — through technical due diligence, AI engineering, and systems work.
I learned to program the way a lot of people did: I locked myself in a room one summer and didn’t come out until I’d built a video game . It was a bad video game. But somewhere in those weeks I lost track of time for the first time in my life: debugging, reasoning, rethinking, discovering… Psychologists call it flow. It was always rare for me. A few colleagues over the years seemed to drop into it…
After losing a MacBook Pro recently, 10 years of hand-written settings I depend on were gone. Backups existed, but all of the little configurations were lost to time. Things like macOS network settings, sleep/wake, time machine backup schedules, GUI applications and their configurations + licenses. This motivated me to find a way to instantly recreate my MacBook in its entirety in less than…
Redirecting to You Are Not Your Job .
I keep coming back to this idea that consistency compounds. I’ve noticed it acutely as a consultant working on multiple different projects in the last two years. Large language models amplify inconsistent technology and quietly reinforce consistent ones . The languages and ecosystems that suffer from the most fragmentation produce the worst agentic output, and the ones with the strongest…
We are living through a great convergence of software tooling. Tools that used to be distinct: a code editor, a project management suite, a design canvas - are all melting into a single, agentic slurry. Linear declared issue tracking dead , Figma opened its canvas to coding agents , and Notion shipped autonomous Custom Agents all within weeks of each other, all using nearly identical language. If…
Saying “I am a software engineer” is beginning to feel like saying “ I am a calculator ” in 1950 now that digital machines can use electrical circuits to count, add, multiply - it’s not long until they’ll be able differentiate a non-continuous function … You’re beginning to feel less-than-useful. This bothers a lot of people for a reason (I think) that has nothing to do with the technology. The…
I recently crossed into another decade of life. Thirty was an age I didn’t expect to reach - I couldn’t conceive of it - now that I’m here I appreciate the journey more than I realized and embrace the acceptance that time continues. I have been alive for 946,708,560 seconds… In about 1.5 years that number will be 1 billion seconds. That’s an infinite number of nine’s in uptime … pretty good if you…
Reflections on my second week at The Recurse Center . Last week I wrote about what came before RC and introducing myself to the unique people in my batch. The second week of Recurse consisted of exploration. I attended more interest groups than I had expected and organized two myself. The openness of the calendar reminds me of a directory of clubs at school you can join. Everyone is welcome and…
This is a summary of my first week at The Recurse Center , which is a 12-week retreat for programmers. The retreat aims to allow programmers to challenge themselves and “work at the edge of their abilities”. The Recurse Center operates on a self-directed basis, meaning there are no classes or curriculum to follow. Each participant is responsible for creating their own schedule and can join or…
Keeping a low profile online is an important and lost skill. We have collectively decided that we prefer to plaster our most sensitive thoughts, moments, and media over the digital airspace. Avoiding drawing attention to one self online is an art. Knowing how much to share, where, and with whom should be a foundational internet literacy skill. Eating a hamburger may feel good, but we all know…