product, culture, systems, and software
Code is a disposable artifact. The spec is the program. Everything you think of as "the software" — the functions, the classes, the tests, the implementation — is one possible compilation of the real program, which lives in the specification. You can regenerate the code from the spec
I've been quiet for a few months now, but I'm finally ready to talk about what's next. I'm starting a "home computer" company. No, not that kind. The other kind. Read on. A Problem of Perspective The current trajectory of
Roughly four years ago, I bought my first house. It sat on two acres in the woods, a beautiful cedar home surrounded by gardens. Like most homeowners, I initially saw it as a complete entity - a house, a home, a sanctuary. But ownership has a way of peeling back layers
Last month, I watched an AI system write a complex piece of software in minutes - a task that would have taken me hours, perhaps days. This wasn't just impressive; it was unsettling. After 18 months of working closely with AI and large language models, two insights stand out:
Life often presents us with complex choices that can significantly impact our future. Whether you're contemplating a career move, considering a major investment, or facing a personal crossroads, the ability to make sound decisions is crucial. A systematic approach to decision-making can help you navigate these challenging
In no particular order: Keep goals simple. If you're building goal-directed agents, it's tempting to model a hierarchy of different types of goals: a high level persona, that persona's overall directive, the current high-level goal, the current low-level goal (task), and
In no particular order: We had a baby in March. Her name is Annabelle. She's beautiful . My professional focus has shifted to AI, bringing it into closer alignment with my personal focus . I'm back on a Mac (M2 Max), both professionally and personally. No more seams
New years are busy for everyone, I suppose. Life at work has reached previously-unknown levels of crazy. Mostly good crazy—success problems, you might say. Costs are cut. Debt is managed. Old platforms are deprecated and retired. Low performers are out. Teams have stabilized. Execution ability is at
Every seam creates an opportunity for something to go wrong. Every third-party between you and your user is a liability.
I've been reflecting more on Able. While I still believe everything I wrote about privacy in my last post is true, I've been contemplating its role in the vision I'm attempting to articulate. The key question: Is privacy a leading feature, or is it
I love programming languages. Once upon a time, languages were mostly practical things born of pure necessity. The closer to the metal you get, the more likely it is that ergonomic choices impact your final performance. So, naturally, the more performant you need your applications to be, the more willing
When something is big—overwhelmingly big—the best place to start is with a simple description of the perceived problem. Modern computing is broken. In some ways, it changes too quickly. Through ingenuity and sheer brute force, we've seen leaps in artificial intelligence recently—especially
For the past eight years, an idea has been rattling around in the back of my head. It concerns the future of computing—the core properties, the shape it should take, the experiences it should enable. For years, I've been trying to shake it, but it keeps coming back.
Documenting my list of "gotchas" for the next brave adventurer. Things compile fine, but won't run? Make sure you change your Run Config's target from Local Machine to WSL . Able to Run, but can't Debug? For some reason my debugger wasn'
In 2015, Oracle hired the engineering department from the shuttered company Nebula , a private cloud company that promised a turnkey OpenStack solution for the most discerning of customers. I was one of the engineers in that department. (Oracle later acquired the company's IP as well, retroactively branding the