Hernan Gonzalez

Software Engineer

[shadcn @shadcn]

Alright. I want you to read this.

Earlier today, I released a new component.

What you see is the finished result.

What you don’t see are the days of planning, research, testing, designing, simplifying, throwing ideas away, and trying again before I felt it was ready.

Within hours, it had been copied and ported to another framework by pointing an agent at my code.

Of course, it’s open source. They were allowed to do it.

And I’ve been around long enough, with multiple successful products, that I don’t care.

But what if this was someone’s first product?

What if they spent months building it, launched on Friday, and by Monday it had been cloned by agents, repackaged, and made free?

What happens when your second product is copied?

Your fifth?

Your tenth?

What happens when every new idea immediately becomes the next prompt?

What happens when your roadmap, your changelog, and your launch announcements become someone else input prompts?

What happens when models become good enough to copy bigger ideas?

What happens when “just execute better” stops being the answer?

What happens when “just build bigger” or “think wider” stops being enough?

What happens when both ideas and execution become cheap?

What happens when the creator pays the full cost of creativity but everyone else pays nothing to reproduce it?

What happens to creativity when AI makes copying effectively free?

What happens to the will to create when AI makes copying effectively free?

Look, copying is not new.

Copying at this speed, cost, and scale is.

People will tell you to think bigger.

But nobody starts "bigger".

Every one of us here started by making something small.

You keep going because, somewhere along the way, the work is rewarded.

Maybe people use it.

Maybe they pay for it.

Maybe they simply recognize the thought, effort, and care that went into it.

Copying once demanded effort.

You had to study the work and understand it to copy it.

That effort created appreciation for the person who made it.

Not anymore.

Creativity begins with small steps.

If we make those first steps feel pointless, we don’t just lose small products.

We lose the people who might have gone on to build the big ones.

We are uniquely positioned here.

We get to use and experience this life-changing technology before almost everyone else.

How we use it will set the default everywhere else.

That default will spread to writing, design, music, research, and every other field where someone still has to take the first creative risk.

We can use AI to build great things.

Or we can use it to strip every new idea for parts.

We decide.

[Theo - t3.gg @theo]

A letter to my friends at Anthropic

I hate that I feel obligated to do this. I hate that I've had to be so harsh towards Anthropic for the past few months. I really, really don't want to. I know it might feel like I'm doing this for clicks or something, but I promise I'm not.

My pro-Anthropic content ALWAYS outperforms my anti-Anthropic content. I have cost myself a lot of money, opportunities, sponsors, and more.

I'm doing this because you work for an evil cult. I'm begging you to wake up.

Your CEO, Dario, does not respect engineers. This is obvious. He couldn't make it more obvious if he tried (and I think he's trying pretty hard)

You know this, but you don't want to acknowledge it. It has kept you up many nights. You know that bad code is shipping to users. You know that one bad tweet might get you fired. You fear for your vesting schedules. You're afraid.

Nobody deserves what you're going through right now. You go to work afraid, you leave work afraid, and you go to YouTube to keep up on the dev world, just to hear me yelling all about how evil your company is.

You deserve better. You might not feel like you do, but you know deep down that this isn't right.

I hope you know how deeply I feel for you. I'm sorry. I know I haven't helped you much individually, and I want to be better about this.

If you're ready to leave, please hit me up. I swear I'll never tell a soul. I have friends at every lab and most startups in the AI world. Most of them would be down to match your current vesting schedules, possibly even go beyond.

If you're staying for the money, I beg you to hit me up. We can make the money happen somewhere that hates you less.

I know I'm asking for a lot of trust here, and that you're scared after seeing how hard I've been on Anthropic. I can't blame you at all for that. I should have posted something like this months ago. That's my failure to own and I will own it to my best ability.

If you're willing to trust me in this moment, I can make it right. Let me help you escape. You deserve to work somewhere that you can have impact. Somewhere that listens when you feel something is wrong. Somewhere that won't fire you when you point out the things that hurt your users.

My DMs are always open to you. When you're ready, let me know. I promise to make it right.

[NASA @NASA]

We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the Moon.

[Theo - t3.gg @theo]

The Block layoffs are going to become the new norm. I think this is the beginning of the end.

Yes, this is my "doomer" video.

[Boris Cherny @bcherny]

@big_duca Someone has to prompt the Claudes, talk to customers, coordinate with other teams, decide what to build next. Engineering is changing and great engineers are more important than ever.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

https://t.co/lXehx9mkQJ

[Hernan Gonzalez @hernan_gonzalez]

@RavenSoftware Can’t you just charge like $25 per battlepass just to have all guns and attachments unlocked? 🥲 wanna come back but don’t have the time or want to level up the guns

[Hernan Gonzalez @hernan_gonzalez]

@ModernWarzone I think more people would come back if they didn’t need to level up the guns. The game needs the casual players it had during Covid. Giving all the guns and attachments can help with that.

[Hernan Gonzalez @hernan_gonzalez]

@TheXclusiveAce @charlieINTEL Only if we didn’t need to level up all of the guns. 🥲 I stepped away for a long time too 🥲

[@LuisValLe @LuisValLe_A]

México y Canada uniéndose contra los Aranceles de Donald Trump:

[Los Angeles Lakers @Lakers]

Yes, it really happened. Welcome to Los Angeles, Luka.

[ThePrimeagen @ThePrimeagen]

do not avoid learning hard things because you think an AI may automate it

nothing is going to cause a greater gap inability than AI in the next 10 years

[Hernan Gonzalez @hernan_gonzalez]

@miguelrios 🥲

[Toei Animation Latinoamérica @ToeiAnimationLA]

#Goku se transformó en #SuperSaiyajin, un día como hoy, hace 33 años 💪

#DragonBallZ 🐉

[Ryan Winchester @ryanwinchester]

Two things I have learned today

1. @unclebobmartin writes clojure now, credits SICP
2. @ThePrimeagen has never heard of SICP

[NBA @NBA]

HOW LEBRON DID LEBRON GET THIS TO GO? 😯

Game 2 of the #NBAPlayoffs presented by Google Pixel is live on TNT!

[nick wright @getnickwright]

Oldest player in the league.

One of 7 guys to ever make it to Year 21.

12-3-5 in the 1st quarter of his first playoff game against the defending champs and best player in the world.

You’ll never see anything like this ever again.

[Nike Basketball @nikebasketball]

Numbers don’t lie.

Yet again, @kingjames has rewritten the equation for greatness: 40k points, 10k assists, 10k rebounds. Truly one of one.

#WeAreAllWitnesses

[Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter]

Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots are expected to part ways today after a remarkable 24 seasons together, ending an unmatched run in NFL history that included six Super Bowl titles, league sources tell me and @MikeReiss.

[Hernan Gonzalez @hernan_gonzalez]

@S3kr3tt0 Lo lamento mucho, mucha fortaleza.