Sean Hickey

Building HarborClient and Addtowallet.

Developer tools, API bugs, accessibility, questionable opinions, and occasionally unrelated thoughts. Former Marine.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

"Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it." - Alan Perlis

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

In the pitch deck, it’s "Artificial Intelligence." In the press release, it’s "Machine Learning." In the codebase, it’s a terrifying regex and an Excel macro. 📉

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@TheREALdidja I found out ways to reduce costs by following tutorials but the app doesn't come preconfigured with sane defaults.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

I've spent 4 days trying to get OpenClaw to correctly check my email. Fuck that app.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@TheREALdidja @launch_llama Yes, exactly! You have to keep your eyes and ears open instead of asking people directly.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

Asking users "What do you want?" leads to hypothetical bias: you've told them to come up with ideas, so they'll come up with ideas they don't really want or need just for the sake of coming up with ideas.

An idea isn't evidence of demand.

[Tom Otto @launch_llama]

The most simple advice is sometimes the hardest

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@raimonvibe Yeah, I've always lowkey wondered what other developers were doing. Not just from looking at their code because that only tells part of the story. They might also be using certain apps or plugins that I didn't know about.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

The more code AI writes, the more I want really good ways to see what that code is actually doing.

Requests. Logs. Traces. Database queries. Diffs.
Generating code is getting cheaper.
Understanding behavior is still the job.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@SummerYuleRDN What a great gif 😂

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

Studies find that people (mostly) make their own luck.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman found that “lucky” people tend to behave differently: they meet more people, notice unexpected opportunities, expect good outcomes, and recover faster from bad ones.

[The codewali @the_codewala]

Does it require luck to be successful in startups?

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@tech_Shreya_200 And don't you forget it!

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@TheREALdidja Indeed, and it's our ego that pulls us into the argument. Stop being driven by ego, and you'll stop caring about the opinions of others, and you'll stop wanting to argue with people to prove how right you are.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@Nav_Mian I wanted to track likes on my X account. Took 2 days with AI because the AI just kept going in circles for days until it finally noticed my account didn't have an oauth 2 token.

[The codewali @the_codewala]

we used to write every line of code by hand and debugged the code ourselves.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

“The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”
- Fred Brooks

Some problems respond really well to throwing more resources at them. Others don't. How do you know which kind of problem you're dealing with?

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

I've never used Twitch because I'm not a gamer, but this whole public coding thing sounds interesting, both to do and to watch. So, I joined Twitch. I feel like part of the club now. 🤩

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@launch_llama @ethiireal Yeah, I was just saying the same thing.
https://t.co/cfdqw5oKav

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

Asking users "What do you want?" leads to hypothetical bias: you've told them to come up with ideas, so they'll come up with ideas they don't really want or need just for the sake of coming up with ideas.

An idea isn't evidence of demand.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@launch_llama People don't know what they want.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@ethiireal @launch_llama The danger in that answer is that people don't know what they want. They also say they want things they don't really want.

[Sean Hickey @headzoo]

@jurlycat Valid red flag. Not only because they're forcing Windows 11, but I wouldn't work at a company that dictates what computer or OS I use.