Brian P. Hogan

Technical content expert, developer education leader, author, educator, mentor, and software developer. I develop people, content, and code. He/Him.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

The person on the stage or the person who wrote that book isn’t better than you.

They just took a shot.

Don’t be afraid to take yours and share your knowledge.

And don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re not good enough.

Especially the voice in your head. It’s a jerk.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

Nest was down today but Google’s status page said all was fine.

It’s so depressing when companies can’t (or won’t) be transparent about outages.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

Did you know I made a link page generator? It’s like linktree but it just gives you an HTML page you can post anywhere. And it’s free. https://t.co/JhSLGT348Y

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

Ok, @temporalio comes through again. I posted a message through my custom posting system yesterday, and the posting to X failed. They deprecated the API I used. Today I corrected the issue and the Workflow completed. No code changes or restarts.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

I love @tailscale. Whether I'm at a coffee shop or a doctor's office, I'm safely routing traffic back home, with access to my servers, my local LLMs, and even my cloud servers. The fact that I get to work there with a great team is even better.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

@thecatfix @changelog @Steve_Yegge @adamstac @pengwynn @joshuaclayton Wow that takes me back. The book is now in its third edition!

https://t.co/ox0X0KdK4p

Thanks for the kind words.

[Nate Berkopec @nateberkopec]

Much, much better benchmark than vague claims I've seen about Ruby "being more token efficient". Neat!

[Charles Oliver Nutter @headius]

In the past hour, I've been linked to two independent studies that show Ruby is among the best languages for AI coding tools, both in token count and speed of implementation. In both cases it was better than Python or JavaScript by a comfortable margin.

[Johann Sathianathen @johann_sath]

saas is dead

openclaw replaced all my subscriptions

went from $480/month on tools
to $1,245/month on API costs & 15 hours a week fixing yaml files

adapt or be left behind

[Dan Allison @danallison]

claude code: I finished the feature you asked me to build. All tests are passing. Would you like me to commit these changes?

me: Please review your changes to make sure there are no mistakes.

cc: [working] … I found 5 mistakes and fixed them. All tests are passing. Ready to commit.

me: Please review your changes to make sure there are no mistakes.

cc: [working] … I found 3 mistakes and fixed 2. The third was pre-existing and unrelated to my changes. Ready to commit.

me: Fix the “pre-existing” mistake.

cc: [working] … I fixed the pre-existing mistake. Ready to commit.

me: Please review your changes to make sure there are no mistakes.

cc: [working] … No mistakes found. There is one failing test that was pre-existing, unrelated to my changes. Would you like me to commit these changes?

me: Fix the failing test.

cc: [compacting] … [working] … All tests are passing. Ready to commit.

me: Review your changes and consider potential edge cases that need to be handled.

cc: [working] … I found 2 edge cases that were not being handled. Both are now handled properly. Ready to commit.

me: Do those edge cases have tests?

cc: [working] … Both edge cases now have test coverage. Would you like me to commit these changes?

me: Yes.

[Tsvetozar Penov @tspenov]

Elixir hiring is still strong this month.

Adobe, Supabase, Whatnot, Remote, Serve Robotics and others have open roles.

February remote roundup 👇

https://t.co/Ix5N2iK87o

#myelixirstatus

[Odysseus | phylax.systems @odysseas_eth]

stop buying mac minis to run a webserver that make API requests and executes bash commands what's wrong with you people you are supposed to be technologists

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

It took ten pages.

[NBC News @NBCNews]

In a 10-page ruling, a U.S. District Judge in Illinois says Buffalo Wild Wings can continue to call its popular menu item “boneless wings,” even though they are “essentially chicken nuggets.” https://t.co/6NFjILWZIZ

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

Is it weird that AI coding assistance is not giving me identity fracture?

A lot of software developers are feeling disoriented and threatened these days. Programming by hand is clearly going the way of the buggy whip and the hand-cranked auger. Which is how we're finding out that a lot of people have their identities bound up in being good at hand-coding and how it feels to do that.

That's not me. It's not me at all. Rather to my surprise, I don't miss coding by hand, not any more than I missed writing assembler when compilers ate the world and made that unnecessary. (That was in a couple years back around 1983, for you youngsters.)

Maybe the fact that I'm not feeling any of this disorientation disqualifies me from having anything to say to people who are. On the other hand...if you can learn to emulate my mental stance and be completely unbothered, maybe that would be a good thing?

So. If you're a programmer, and you're feeling disoriented, try this on for size:

I like being a wizard. I like being able to speak spells, to weave complex patterns of logic that make things happen in the world. Writing code is a way to manifest my will.

Yes, I've piled up a lot of arcane knowledge over the 50 years I've been doing this. But languages of invocation, they come and they go. Been a long time since I've had any use for being able to program in 8086 assembler, and that's okay. I have better spells now, and these days some rather powerful familiars.

What I'm inviting you to do is think of yourself as a wizard. Not as a person who writes code, but as a person who is good at assuming the kind of mental states required to bend reality with the application of spells.

And if that's who you are, does it matter if the spells are painstakingly scribed in runes of power, versus being spoken to an obedient machine spirit?

It's all one; it's all the manifestation of will. Arcane languages come and go, machine spirits appear and then diminish to be replaced by more powerful ones, but you? You are the magic-wielder. Without you, none of it happens.

Same as it ever was. Same is it ever was. And so mote it be.

[Dr. Dominic Ng @DrDominicNg]

Writing forces your brain to coordinate memory, reasoning, and meaning-making simultaneously.

Every time you write, you rewire toward clearer thinking. Every time you let an LLM do it, you rewire toward consumption.

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

Mission is just marketing.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

@theisraataha @BekahHW @acolombiadev This is the move right here.

Food goes back to the introvert nest.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

Issue 48 of my newsletter ships later today. It includes a markdownlint tutorial. Subscribe at https://t.co/unzagamOhA to get the latest issue in your inbox.

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

Just pushed publish on my 4-song Christmas EP. Traditional songs in my style. If you celebrate, give a listen. https://t.co/IQADqGhaOz

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

I have published my newsletter for 47 months straight.

Are you subscribed? It’s free. Once a month.

https://t.co/L6v6KGvH1K

[Brian P. Hogan @bphogan]

This is a real thing that happens.

[Associate Deans @ass_deans]

Yes, you are required to attend our new campus leadership summit. Yes, it does have a registration fee. But you get a faculty discount! 25% off!!