Ant The Developer

I'm a #developer and a #writer. Currently, a Staff Engineer at an AI startup

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

Fan of I, Robot by Isaac Asimov?

I was re-reading his works recently (I'm up to Robots of Dawn) and decided to pick writing back up with my own take on AI.

Starting with my first "I, AI" story called "Spare Cycles" (no AI was used to write this story):

https://t.co/nu8Z6aJgG6

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

You gotta have a way to carry you across those transitions. I like to listen to audiobooks as I get ready in the morning, when I get in the car, and while I’m shopping.

The transitions are less exhausting/jarring that way.

Same for my kids.

[aut0 @aut0m8d]

if you have a toddler, you learn that they generally dislike transitions. like they'll resist going to take a bath, and then they'll also resist getting out of the bath. then you realize that transitions just require energy and adults don't like them either

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I took a multi-year break from blogging in 2022 and got a bit more back into it at the end of last year.

It's unbelievable that I went from 39,500 views/month to 395 view/month because of that break.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

The best thing about the skill is that I personally use it and keep working on it.

I've been refining this skill for almost a year and I finally got to a point where I feel like I could open-source it.

https://t.co/BnoCfweoHb

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I decided to open-source my /deep-research skill I've been using for almost a year now.

I've used this skill to learn about new subjects, compare technologies, create quickstart guides for myself, etc.

A single search is not deep research. 🧵

https://t.co/BnoCfweoHb

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

When sources disagree, it gets notes and included in the research result.

The skill calls out ambiguity and tries its best to give you the data you need _and_ a starting point for even more research.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I really wish the xteink dreaded everyone is posting about had a backlight. That’d make it literally the perfect reader.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I’ve been steadily building out Skillbox, my skills repo, and just added a new SKILL.md: Code Reviewer.

It’s based on my real-world PR review experience, plus what I’ve learned using Claude Code for code reviews.

Take a look:

https://t.co/Ufd9gJy3q7

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

There’s always going to have to be someone that tells AI what it should do.

Maybe we’ll all become highly-technical PMs instead of engineers?

[Coder girl 👩‍💻 @dev_maims]

Software Engineers, what’s your backup plan if Artificial Intelligence writes better code than you in 2 years?

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

It’s been my experience that coding isn’t really the bottleneck of sr (and above) engineers. Mostly because majority of our work isn’t writing code but everything else around that process.

[David K 🎹 @DavidKPiano]

Most senior software engineers are working just as hard as before because coding is only a small part of their job, and that won't change any time soon

(And it is already writing better code with human guidance)

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

@theo Does VIM + Tmux count? I've been using those tools for 11 years now as my daily drivers and they lend themselves to agentic coding very well.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

That's totally understandable. Whenever I've used Claude Code fully and paid for the tokens directly, I averaged around $1K/week. Let's call it $4K/month.

That's a hefty price for very little productivity improvements. Especially compared to improving business processes instead.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

There is massive irony in how AI coding tools are starting to become TOO expensive for many enterprises - after eg Anthropic removed subsidizing AI subscriptions.

We might go from "everyone use AI for everything!" to "you have $300/month AI budget; use your brain for the rest."

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

@ericclemmons All the time. Pre-AI, there was a moment of frustration at having lost it but there was the reward of having written it _better_ the second time around for sure.

I miss it!

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

1. squash your changes into 1 commit
2. create a fresh up-to-date branch
3. cherry-pick the squashed commit
4. ???
5. Profit

or, just start over and use the original branch as inspiration. This kind of thing happens all the time, tbh.

[Vivo @vivoplt]

Interviewer:

Your branch is 200 commits behind main. What will you do?

Merge or rebase?

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I've said it a few times in the past but the actual _coding_ part of the job is a bottleneck only for side projects. Instead, the bottlenecks tend to be:

- bad planning
- too many/wasteful meetings
- bad communication

Fix those issues, and you don't need gen AI.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

I've got TMUX running with like 8+ sessions. I do actually just start another agent -- whether it's to plan work, start new work, continue work, etc.

If not that, then I'm checking Slack, answering messages, reading a new doc someone sent me to review, etc.

[dax @thdxr]

so what do you do when your agent is working

and don't say start another agent because i know you're lying

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

With AI it's even easier -- create a fresh branch and tell your agent the Git SHA of the original commit and then ask it to incorporate it in the updated codebase.

It does fairly well with this kind of work!

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

1. squash your changes into 1 commit
2. create a fresh up-to-date branch
3. cherry-pick the squashed commit
4. ???
5. Profit

or, just start over and use the original branch as inspiration. This kind of thing happens all the time, tbh.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

An Honest Opinion on the State of Code Gen AI, Spring 2026 Edition

https://t.co/0Op9dyZAH7

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

It includes code snippets, live coding, fill-in-the-blank answers, reordering, etc.

I'm so excited for it.

[Ant The Developer @AntJanus]

Super excited for my self-learning platform I'm building. I have a CC Skill that can generate a data structure for "courses" and so anything I want to learn, I just tell CC to convert it to this format.

Then, I have this step-by-step process that can teach me