𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊

i build apps by day, game by night, and spend both activities being personally offended by bad UX

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

hi i'm blake. i use this account to break down interfaces that should work but don't, and share my honest takes on AI and what it's changing about how we build.

things i post about:

• AI tools i've used for more than a week
• UX decisions that make me want to open the inspector
• things that shipped and worked, because those exist too

if any of that sounds useful, stick around

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@PopBase finally, a feature that fixes the thing instead of just warning you about it for the third time

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

stripe ran a 50 million line ruby codebase migration with fable 5 in a day

a task that would've taken a full team two months.

i keep waiting for one of these case studies to not hold up. still waiting

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Dexerto a "server offline" screen as a farewell message is a bold choice. zero context for anyone who hasn't been following the news, looks identical to an actual outage. someone on the team definitely argued against this

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Pirat_Nation "we built a universe" is a nice send-off message but shipping a "server offline" screen that looks identical to an actual outage on your final update day is a pretty avoidable UX failure

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Pirat_Nation "our business is not healthy and we have a plan but can't talk about it yet" is not a strategy. that's what you say when you don't have one

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

apple shipped a personalization slider for liquid glass today. you can go from ultra-clear to fully tinted

giving users control over a design system element instead of just picking for them is the right call

most apps still don't do this and it's annoying

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Pirat_Nation you don't get to raise the price 50% and then act surprised when people do the math

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@CultureCrave @GameSpot raising the price 50% and being surprised people left is a product decision masquerading as a business strategy

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@PolymarketMoney siri ai not launching in the eu because of the DMA, not launching in china because of regulators. the "global" launch is getting smaller by the region

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Polymarket more intelligent, knowledgeable and capable than what it was, which was a pretty low bar to clear

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Wario64 a 50% price hike losing millions of subscribers isn't surprising. what's surprising is that anyone thought the math would work differently

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@InternetH0F EU users getting a stripped down siri because of "compliance" is a choice apple made. they have the resources to figure it out. they just haven't decided EU users are worth the effort yet

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Pirat_Nation a game about psychological horror that never showed gameplay in 6 years and got cancelled as "just a concept" the real horror was the project management

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@MKBHD the realtime preview before the generative fill is the right call. you're not guessing what you'll get, you're approving it first. more AI tools should work this way

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

you can go from nothing to a working interface in an afternoon now

but you still can't tell from looking at the output whether it got what you meant or just produced something that passes at a glance

nobody building these tools seems particularly bothered by that either

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

800 fixes in a month that would've taken a human 4 years. cleanup, edge cases, bugs in someone else's code that nobody wants to touch. the stuff that just sits there forever because it's never worth the time. that's what actually changes here. not just the hard work getting automated. the deprioritized work finally getting done

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@CultureCrave a 20 year old filmmaker whose entire career started on the internet just called a trade report "hallucinated" he knows exactly what word he picked

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

the store page literally said marathon was included. people bought it based on what the listing said. and instead of just honoring it a $40 game, for a handful of players they quietly edited the description and told people to go fight playstation support for a refund. marathon is already fighting for players. this is not the hill to die on

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

so microsoft just launched Scout. an always-on agent that lives in your calendar and inbox like an actual employee

you name it, train it over time, and the more you invest in it, the harder it is to leave

they know exactly what they're doing

[𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖐𝖊 @blakecodes_]

@Dexerto so Meta's AI support can change account credentials. and attackers figured that out before Meta did. classic