[journal] Impressively Capable, Impressively Foolish
A little report on the state of contemporary LLM -based tools.
Journal — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho
Learning in public: on theology, technology, ethics, software, politics, art, and more.
Latest posts
[journal] You Can Rightly Judge Things You Have Not Tried
This actually isn’t that complicated; stop letting people lie to you.
[journal] Collaboratives: A Proposal
An idea for indie folks working together.
[journal] 2026 Boston Marathon Race Report
I did it, and I did it fast !
[journal] Humans Are Amazing
We took a family ski trip and it provoked no little astonishment.
[journal] Noticing, and Solving, Technical Problems in a Codebase
And a requisite aside about large language models.
[journal] 2025 in Review: Writing
Another year of writing a good-sized book‘s worth of words… and also contributing to a major revision of a book.
[journal] 2025 in Review: The Rest of Life
Family, happy hours, parties, parenting, church, middle adulthood.
[journal] 2025 in Review: Professional
Getting things going at Vanta and shipping a lot in my Year of Shipping.
[journal] 2025 in Review: Music
Symphony progress, an EP release, social media sadness, and more.
[journal] 2025 in Review: Health and Fitness
A couple of marathons, a bicycle tour, and… passing out and going to the ER. What a year.
[journal] Friendly Little Wrapper Types
What you can do with a “thing” in your system really, really matters!
[journal] 2025 in Review: Public Speaking
Just one thing—but a big one!
[journal] 2025 in Review: Reading
My stated goal at the start of the year was to read 25 volumes each of non-fiction and fiction. (I picked 25 volumes for 2025.) I may get there with nonfiction in the next few days — my current count…
[journal] Context and Trust, or: Test Suites Reflect Teams
Brandur pokes hard at some big tech companies’ test suite times with 37Signals as his example. I’m not so sure. Why? Context and trust.
[journal] Some Products Just Aren’t Big Companies
We need to remember that and not only accept but embrace it.
[journal] 2025 Colfax Marathon Race Report
I ran my first marathon today! It went great!
[journal] Next: Vanta
I started a new role at Vanta this week, and I am excited to see what we can do together!
[journal] Own Your Music
And a tip for how to start making progress on that on Apple Music.
[journal] Sell your RSUs
Or at least, think of them in terms of expected value!
[journal] Marvel’s Missed Musical Opportunity
Say it with me, everyone: Leitmotifs are good, actually!
[journal] Lowercase Your Namespaces
A mild proposal for making JavaScript and TypeScript namespace imports nicer to work with.
[journal] The Strangest Thing in Tech (Criticism)?
Contra Brad East on tech optimism, criticism, etc.
[journal] How Progress Feels
When you get better at something, it rarely feels like some big breakthrough. More often, something that used to be hard now feels perfectly ordinary.
[journal] The Essence of Successful Abstractions
Complexity has to live somewhere; but it does not have to live everywhere.