Ted Nyman

computers at openai. prev ceo cased, cto github, eng banksimple. "sf’s guardian angel"-ken jennings

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@dingyi 世易时移

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@HistorianZhang @fncischen fudan is a little ahistorical, too. also 10 vs 12? actually more curious where the image comes from..

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

math is easy af once you realize all the Greek symbols are actually just slow as fuck Python built-ins

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

the fact git has lasted this long (20+ years) is bonkers. statistically, something you wouldn’t expect to see in your lifetime. the messi of software.

a testament to good engineering practices. an extremely careful set of maintainers

& most of all: the C programming language.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@vshih2 @HistorianZhang interleave with 荣毅仁 origin story

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

time is a flat circle etc etc

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

was asked today what’s a good first programming language. I always answer python, since it’s practical, but realized today that doesn’t matter in the same way now.

didn’t have a great answer. but after awhile, said, honestly: Lisp. almost had an existential crisis.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@HistorianZhang business + gov district so tourists don’t think of it/know the name. but it’s easy to everything; great deals.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

tremendous meme potential I never noticed until now

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@antirez seems right to me. 90% of the inertia and resistance to advanced integration testing is how much of a pain it is to reliably setup the testing ground; this is mostly solved (as long as auth works!)

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@trevoracorn brick veneer. I’ll take it.

could be far far worse.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

in technical discussion, the phrase “that’s fair” is the highest praise there is.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@antirez every empire wanted to be there

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

new interview:

write C

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@htmx_org graham greene wrote about this

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

salvatore points the right way, as usual. we are in a transitional era.

in an era like this, things will be weird! half-done things. the twilight of an era. this has happened before, in the early renaissance.

[antirez @antirez]

There are projects where I don't look anymore at the code at all, but only control the design ideas and the "product" itself (DS4). There are other stuff where I check every line and modify (mostly saying how and not myself, sometimes myself) every detail, like for Redis Arrays. Let's say that for 80% of the projects to check the code no longer makes sense, but checking the ideas / algorithms / code structure even only by prompting is, I believe, a good idea. While providing the right design decisions is not just a good idea, it is essential to do great work.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@curlykoder @jorandirkgreef @antirez that seems quite right to me

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@lvvittor it’s very nice. but the issues in source control going forward will be infrastructure, not UX.

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

been noodling and editing and fixing; and I have something I don’t mind for a 1.1 edition of High Performance Git

https://t.co/1w1DgDZS7Q

free to the world

a lot better will come so stay tuned for 1.2

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

@jorandirkgreef @curlykoder @antirez my old friend Salvatore may disagree but I don’t think “code as poetry” or craft-fetishism in 2026 is the right move either.

the point is how to maintain quality under new limits! not romanticize ourselves

[Ted Nyman @tnm]

pdf too, so you can take the book to Zion and get off the internet