🔥 "You can't afford bad engineers anymore."…
"You can't afford bad engineers anymore." https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html
justin․searls․co
Where Justin Searls is content to post content.
Latest posts
🔗 Claude doesn't need you anymore
This week, Anthropic shipped a new messaging feature to Claude Code . It sounds innocuous enough: Cross-session messaging lets Claude deliver a message from one of your Claude Code sessions to another. When a change in one session breaks what another is building on, Claude can warn that session before you notice. When one session settles a question another is blocked on, Claude can send the answer…
🎙️ Breaking Change podcast v55 - I'm a good guyjin
We cut our trip a day short, so I found myself with a totally free day with no plans . Naturally, I wasted it by recording a 3-hour podcast. Dang. I always enjoy shooting the shit with/at you, and if you'd like to be a more active participant in the shit-shooting, then hit me up at podcast@searls.co . Really, I'll be nicer to you than I am to Sam Altman and Tang Tan. I promise. Back to manually…
📸 Chill some Netflix and Chill
Finally, Netflix you can chill.
🔥 In 2025, I bought four WD Black 8TB NVMe SSDs,…
In 2025, I bought four WD Black 8TB NVMe SSDs, slammed them in a Thunderbolt enclosure, and set them up as a 32TB Raid 0 volume for my Mac Studio. Price in April 2025: $2,199.96 Price today: $5,836.00 Felt stupidly expensive at the time, but now I feel like a genius.
🔥 I realize this is Very Rude, but I've noticed a…
I realize this is Very Rude, but I've noticed a lot of the people who think AI sucks at writing code never seemed very good at writing code themselves. At this point, if you can't get it working, it's probably a skill issue. https://www.seangoedecke.com/llms-reward-expertise/
🔥 I joked last year that by leveraging coding…
I joked last year that by leveraging coding agents I now "played the orchestra", by directing multiple programmers at once. I have changed jobs again. Now I tell Fable to conduct an orchestra of Opus 5 agents for me. It's closed 55 GitHub issues in 6 hours across my iOS apps.
🔥 When I'm AFK, I want to just create issues and…
When I'm AFK, I want to just create issues and reply to them and have an agent spin up, do stuff, and wind down. order_taker seems to do that p well. https://github.com/searlsco/order_taker
🔥 I'd describe my approach to work as,…
I'd describe my approach to work as, "light-hearted and heavy-handed."
🎙️ Breaking Change podcast v54 - Hot Sleeper
The summer heat ended up thawing out my podcast, so I had no choice but to go buy a new microphone and grumble into it for a couple hours. Just how that works. Please enjoy . I am actively soliciting mailbag participation. As always, the address is podcast@searls.co , and I'd be really curious to hear how America is doing because it seems like everything is going great. For the first time I let…
✉️ Content Hiatus
I've decided to go on a content hiatus. This will be my last dispatch for a while. I don't know how long I'll be gone. Why? Because I've been posting to an anonymous audience on the Internet almost every day since I was eleven years old. I posted through Bill Clinton's impeachment, 9/11, the Iraq War, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the version of Siri that would tell you where to hide a body ,…
🎙️ Breaking Change podcast v53 - Pod Freeze
The promise of Breaking Change is that with every major version (this being the 60th episode of the program, but only the 53rd such release), I will break something . Well, I finally did it. I think I broke the show. Find out how by listening for yourself! Want to be my friend? Drop me a line at justin@searls.co . Want to file a complaint with my supervisor? Forward your concerns to…
🔥 Update on using MacBook Neo for dev tasks: this…
Update on using MacBook Neo for dev tasks: this is definitely a device you should to reboot daily, even without Chrome or any Electron apps. This morning, Zed (a native Rust app) was 500% CPU without a single window open, 3 macOS internal daemons had crashed, 800ms input lag.
🔥 Using MacBook Neo for "real" development work…
Using MacBook Neo for "real" development work and it's simultaneously juggling: • Running Claude Code in three tabs at once • Compiling multi-package Xcode builds • Automating two iOS Simulators and a Mac build of my app Hasn't missed a beat. Not bad for a phone chip.
🔥 Claude sure goes down a lot for being a product…
Claude sure goes down a lot for being a product targeting businesses. Maybe Anthropic is just doing humanity a solid by helping us understand how much it will suck when the era of subsidized pricing for LLM-based products ends.
🔥 Sent the DLSS 5 video to some not-very-online…
Sent the DLSS 5 video to some not-very-online friends and they thought it looked incredible. Shame on them for not knowing that real gamers are supposed to be outraged! (I happen to think it looks slick as hell and am looking forward to using it.) https://youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA
🎙️ Merge Commits podcast - freeCodeCamp: Which Devs Are Screwed?
Quincy Larson over at freeCodeCamp had me on their podcast to discuss how the rapidly changing software industry is impacting junior developers and what they can do about it. I don't normally spend time talking about this stuff, because I started programming in the 90s and can't claim to know anything about what it's like to just be starting now. I've also always discouraged people from getting…
🔥 We blew past this milestone without much…
We blew past this milestone without much fanfare, but it bears repeating: building awareness & goodwill by releasing open source no longer makes strategic sense for many companies. Agents increasingly consume & adapt OSS—often without users' knowledge—and cut out the creator.
🔗 Models are commodities, harnesses are differentiators
Ben Thompson's latest rests on a single load-bearing assumption: that the harness and the model are tightly coupled, the way Apple's hardware and software are. It follows, then, that if agents require integration between model and harness, that the companies building that integration—specifically Anthropic and OpenAI—are actually poised to be significantly more profitable than it might have seemed…
🔥 Marathon is the first PVP-heavy game to get its…
Marathon is the first PVP-heavy game to get its hooks in me since… Unreal Tournament in 2001? I fucking suck, but even playing solo it can feel incredible when you do manage to come out on top. If you want to roll with me, I'm Searls#2430 (or just email me justin@searls.co )
📄 Dual-loop BDD is the new Red-green TDD
This one goes out to all the testing neophytes who only recently realized that it's useful to have an automated means of verifying their code does what it claims to do. For the last month, I've been working on prove_it , a framework for building quality harnesses for Claude Code —primarily via its hooks system . In a recent release, I added TDD enforcement to its default configuration. First, it…
🔥 Pro-tip to any devs who only discovered TDD…
Pro-tip to any devs who only discovered TDD thanks to coding agents: refactoring is inherently directional . It's more like prefactoring—you rearrange code to make the next change easy. That means you (and your agent) should know the next planned change before you refactor!
📸 Red-green rally
I'm still iterating on my experimental Claude Code verification harness, prove_it . This week my focus has been on nudging agents to practice test-driven development. Traditionally, we called this "TDD", but which has recently been renamed to "red-green TDD" as it has been discovered that this is what LLMs interpret as "real TDD". Anyway, so that I could watch it steer an agent in a fresh codebase…
🔥 Claude's electron app for macOS is such a buggy…
Claude's electron app for macOS is such a buggy mess that I've uninstalled it and sequestered it to a Safari tab, just like I did to Slack, Discord, etc., six years ago. ChatGPT is a native app where things like the stop button actually work (usually) https://tonsky.me/blog/fall-of-native/
🔥 I'll admit, it's hard not to get frustrated by…
I'll admit, it's hard not to get frustrated by all the posts about coding agents going viral lately that are saying the same shit I've been blogging and podcasting for multiple years at this point with little to no fanfare. https://blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/grief-and-the-ai-split/
🔥 GPT 4.1? In 2026? Is the State Department on a…
GPT 4.1? In 2026? Is the State Department on a budget? Is every diplomatic cable just going to have 300 space-delimited emdashes now? https://www.nextgov.com/acquisition/2026/03/state-offloads-claude-underpinning-model-flagship-statechat/412022/
🔥 Want to buy Becky's iPhone Air? I can vouch that…
Want to buy Becky's iPhone Air? I can vouch that it's in excellent condition (unlocked, $300 less than MSRP). Buy here on Swappa or send me your best offer justin@searls.co https://swappa.com/listing/view/LACO93287
🔥 I need a new blog to subscribe to. Know any you…
I need a new blog to subscribe to. Know any you think I'd like? E-mail me: justin@searls.co
🔥 Barely a month goes by where I can check the…
Barely a month goes by where I can check the news without being reminded of the Cracked skit about two comedy writers who were hired to run a fake Donald Trump campaign and then accidentally got him elected https://youtu.be/8qIQbydyHwc?si=COq7K0HLng3LHI1R
🎙️ Breaking Change podcast v52.0.1 - Len Testa: Bring back the Starcruiser
Today, we're joined by a very special guest, Len Testa ! You might know him from The Disney Dish podcast or from his excellent theme park travel planning app Touring Plans . Or you might not know him at all! No wrong answers. This episode is all about Disney's ill-fated Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser live action role-playing hotel—which we both had the opportunity to experience right when it…
🔥 For the extremely narrow Venn diagram of people…
For the extremely narrow Venn diagram of people who love both I Think You Should Leave and Disco Elysium, this is amazing https://youtu.be/6OKgdTXLWIg?si=RyS95BqxFBSEVwyQ
🔥 If Nothing releases a folding phone, they should…
If Nothing releases a folding phone, they should absolutely name it the Nothing Burger https://www.pcmag.com/news/hands-on-nothing-4a-series-midrange-phones
🔥 Dear prospective sponsors, You can't pay me to…
Dear prospective sponsors, You can't pay me to say nice things about you, but you CAN pay me to not say mean things about you. Please send inquiries to sponsorship@searls.co https://www.theverge.com/news/889595/tim-sweeney-signed-away-his-right-to-criticize-google-until-2032
🔥 You know, a lot of lefties are loathe to admit…
You know, a lot of lefties are loathe to admit that the oil companies have been working hard to abolish ICE since before most of them were born
🔥 "$599 is a fucking statement."…
"$599 is a fucking statement." https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/599_not_a_piece_of_junk_macbook_neo
🔥 A lot of people were confused by Trump's…
A lot of people were confused by Trump's immediate embrace of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, but it makes a lot more sense when you consider that he thinks they spell it "Golf"
🔥 Can confirm, Claude Cowork is very cool, but if…
Can confirm, Claude Cowork is very cool, but if you actually use it for more than a few minutes it'll bring any Mac to its knees. Entire system becomes unresponsive eventually. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543
🔥 The M4 iPad Air is notable, because it will set…
The M4 iPad Air is notable, because it will set Apple apart as the only company to release a product in 2026 sporting more RAM for the same price as the outgoing model. (8GB to 12GB) https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/02/apple-announces-ipad-air-with-m4-chip/
🎙️ Breaking Change podcast v52 - Skynet any%
Sure feels like some combination of AI, the US military, and the AI military could bring an end to the world any day now, so I figured I'd better record one last show for posterity. Welcome me on this version's speedrun to the apocalypse! So long as the EMP blasts don't nuke all our ham radios, write in to podcast@searls.co and I'll read it on the next release of the program. Over. Be sure to…
🔥 Was always so inspired by that speech where JFK…
Was always so inspired by that speech where JFK said "we will go to the moon... or do some other stuff instead" https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/27/nasa-changes-delays-moon-missions
📍 Sushi Izuki
Finally got a chance to visit @izukiorlando with @instantsal this week. Generally, I set my expectations for sushi in Florida to quite low , especially if the restaurant isn't Japanese-owned. Izuki blew away those admittedly reserved expectations with one of the best sushi courses I've ever had—and it's just around the corner from our place! Beyond having a direct relationship with a supplier that…
🔥 The new Star Trek Voyager game is such a…
The new Star Trek Voyager game is such a thorough simulation that I think it's convinced me to abandon my dreams of joining Starfleet when I grow up. Being a captain is no fun at all!
📄 Agents are ushering in the Antisocial Coding era
The first time I visited GitHub's HQ2 in 2012, they had a TV showing off their first animations of Mona and were using it to push their new tagline: Social Coding . The phrase certainly captured the moment we were living in, so in 2014, I borrowed it for the title of one of my more popular conference talks, The Social Coding Contract . The goal of that presentation was to warn audiences of the…
🔥 If you've posted an issue to any of my repos and…
If you've posted an issue to any of my repos and I never responded: GitHub apparently disabled automatic watching for new repositories last year and nobody noticed. Issues are now graveyards from Day 1. No wonder my inbox has been so peaceful! https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/157470
🔥 My coding agent harnesses are designed to enable…
My coding agent harnesses are designed to enable parallel serial work—multiple agents running in multiple tabs, all committing to main instead of worktrees. turbocommit does this by linking each session's commits: https://github.com/searlsco/turbocommit?tab=readme-ov-file#continuity-across-workstreams
🔥 Ever hear of the Cart of Thesius? It's when…
Ever hear of the Cart of Thesius? It's when every single item you ordered from Instacart has been replaced with something else. It's a thought experiment: are the bags on your porch still your order? Their customer support contends that it is. I feel pretty strongly that it's not.
🔥 Speaking of me nailing predictions, I feel like…
Speaking of me nailing predictions, I feel like this one from 2023 is aging like wine. Not least of which because the decades-long debate over "10x developers" has been rendered moot by agents. https://testdouble.com/insights/the-looming-demise-of-the-10x-developer
🔥 Are they sure it was the Citrini Research sci-fi…
Are they sure it was the Citrini Research sci-fi substack that caused the crash and not my much tighter, more grounded "Brace for the Fuckening" post written three days prior? Who's to say. https://apple.news/AaV5OdPkJR12OiHpdMqOdYQ
🔥 The startup acronym of the day is "DTC", which…
The startup acronym of the day is "DTC", which stands for Down To Consume.
🔥 Common feedback when I write about AI: "if job…
Common feedback when I write about AI: "if job loss is a real risk, then tell people WTF to do beyond, 'generate more revenue than you cost your employer!'" Answer: if there were a process or playbook to make yourself irreplaceable, AI agents would follow it. And replace you.