Looping Casino
Autonomous coding loops excel at search, not judgment. They can optimize toward a goal, but they can’t reliably tell when the goal is wrong. Engineering is still more than iteration speed.
Mahdi Yusuf
Thoughts on software, people, and side projects — written before the story gets cleaned up.
Latest posts
Known Rot Problem
Most leaders can name what's broken. The Known Rot Problem isn't blindness — it's seeing the dysfunction clearly and not moving anyway. Here's why organizations stall even when everyone has the same list.
The Speed Tax
Speed is seductive, but unchecked velocity creates hidden risk. When building gets cheaper, scrutiny disappears—leading to security gaps, product bloat, and cultures that reward shipping over thinking.
The journey was the point
America outsourced manufacturing, then the skills to design what gets manufactured. Software is next.
The Depth Trade
The internet didn’t stop valuing insight — it just stopped requiring it.
Writing is networking that scales
Writing scales what networking can’t. A short essay on how publishing ideas builds real relationships, creates leverage, and attracts the right people over time.
Your agent is building things you'll never use
I built more with AI agents in two months than the previous year. I used almost none of it. The real productivity gain isn't building—it's using.
Why your coding agent keeps undoing your architecture
Think of your codebase as a state machine. The code is the current state. The architectural decisions are the transitions.
Agents didn't kill libraries—they just changed the math
I've been writing software long enough to remember when "don't reinvent the wheel" was gospel. Find a library. Import it. Move on. The assumption was clear: someone else's maintained code beats your one-off implementation every time. That assumption is breaking down.
I Made My Homepage Greet You in 26 Languages
I have a 3090 sitting in a Kubernetes cluster doing basically nothing. So I made it say hello in 26 languages.
Survival Guide: IRC
As a developer you have many tools in your arsenal, often times you are unaware how useful a tool is until you know how to truly use it. IRC was one of these tools; for the longest time I couldn’t understand why and how it was useful. Which
Good Clean Python Install on Mavericks OSX 10.911
I just spent the better part of an hour trying to effectively install version of python that doesn’t affect the rest of my system. This is usually pretty trivial effort according to most online articles. There are a few subtleties you might want to be aware of before
Hacking Rdio
The following post was a post I made couple of days ago. Then took it down once I realized the affect it had on the Rdio team. The Rdio team has taken steps to rate limit the downloading in the way described in the following post. Which means its still
Reading Other People’s Code
I really enjoy reading other people’s code, it allows you see how others solve common problems, and sometimes even provide parables on what you shouldn’t do with yours. It also teaches the much needed  skill  of reading other people’s code.
Fasting & Programming
m not sure how many of you know but for the past 10 days I have been fasting. Fasting you say? No, I am not protesting the demolition of a national park (not that I wouldn’t I love parks). For those of you not familiar with Ramadan it&