James Gifford

[Tino Wening @TinoWening]

AI-assisted engineering has created a weird inversion of first-principles thinking.

When a system produces an awkward design, people increasingly ask whether our engineering principles were wrong rather than whether the design is bad.

That's not how it works.

Architecture isn't just a bunch of preferences. Its useful parts exist to reduce coupling, constrain state, localize change, preserve invariants, and make failure tractable.

Some conventions are going to become totally outdated as agents get better. Human readability isn't set in stone. Folder structures aren't physics. "Clean code" isn't a law of nature.

But if you're going to abandon a convention, you need proof that the underlying constraint is no longer there.

Just because a model can deal with complexity doesn't mean the complexity is free. Just because a model can generate patches doesn't mean those patches will compose well over time. And a model confidently explaining its own output isn't independent validation.

The first-principles question is much simpler:

What are some key features that make it easier to make the right changes to a system?

Measure those.

Everything else is just a matter of taste, fashion, or rationalization.

[DHH @dhh]

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[James Gifford @jrgifford]

@garybernhardt sometimes the answer these provide are so absurdly specific, it must be true.

[James Gifford @jrgifford]

getting to meet @dexhorthy in person and talk about software factories this week was really cool

looking forward to what’s coming next for humanlayer and agentic development, let’s gooooo!

[sunil pai @threepointone]

um the obvious answer is github, it’s created at least 2 generations of (entitled!) developers who believe software should be free as in beer

don’t think my career would’ve existed or played out the way it did because they decided to support the planet

[Matt Pocock @mattpocockuk]

/show-me is a phenomenal skill

Makes PR descriptions extremely easy to read

Basically a toolbox of "nice ways to look at code"

Nice work, @dexhorthy

https://t.co/phB1dAPwgG

[James Gifford @jrgifford]

@doodlestein It's a legal belt *with* suspenders.

[Caitlin Cloud @CaitlinCloud9]

signs you’re a bottom tier member of society:

- littering
- cutting in line
- not returning your shopping cart
- not saying thank you when someone holds the door
- parking in a handicap spot when you don’t need one
- carving your name into or graffitiing nature
- wearing pajamas to the airport
- passing your pet off as a service animal
- being rude to service workers
- lying/stealing/cheating

[𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 @shagbark_hick]

My greatest blackpilling event was probably when I volunteered to do "hometown recruiting" when I was in the Coast Guard.

I drove to dozens of high schools all over Northern NY, talking to kids about life in the USCG.

Met hundreds of students -- got zero applicants.

I had assumed that it'd be a very easy thing, particularly because at the time, the CG was desperate for new recruits (which was very unusual).

So all I had to do was find the young men, tell them about the legitimately adventurous life that the USCG could offer them, share my glowing review of my time in the branch, and get them in contact with the recruiting office. The door was wide open for them to make what would certainly be one of the best decisions in their young life.

Instead of finding adventurous young men, I found visibly distressed, obese, effete, proudly lazy teenagers whose primary concern seemed to be about whether the job was "easy" and whether you get cell service when underway on a Coast Guard ship. Many were visibly high on marijuana, clad in sweatpants, long-haired, dead to the world.

Their interest was only vaguely piqued at the idea of the GI Bill. And at any appeal made to the bold adrenaline and selflessness of Search and Rescue operations at sea, I was met with bafflement and total disinterest.

At first, I thought it was a fluke -- that the school I visited first simply had a student body that was particularly dysfunctional. But soon, I found myself having the same experience at every school, without exception. And this went on for weeks. Day in, day out, the portrait of America's youth I saw was dismal.

If you ever wonder why I seem to have developed a passion for telling young men to get their asses in gear, to grow up, grab life by the horns, and to reject all forms of self-pity and passionlessness -- I think I picked it up when I did Hometown Recruiting.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Always been the cause of this nonsense. And why would you blamed them. Cheap way to stay in the game.

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

Gavin, spot on.

AI is bringing manufacturing back to America and reindustrializing the nation after decades of offshoring.

AI is creating demand that drives investment in our aging power grid and sustainable energy, powered by market forces, not subsidies.

AI is creating construction and manufacturing jobs across energy plants, chip fabs and data centers.

AI is creating new companies and industries. $400 billion has been invested in AI startups in the past six months alone.

Builders must partner with communities to build in their hometowns, earn trust and create local benefits.

We have an opportunity to create lasting benefits for communities across America and help America lead the next industrial revolution.

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

DO NOT build or fund this idea.

It's infinite digital fentanyl, and will be the most addictive technology ever created.

So... let's not?

The tech community should shame anyone who does.

[Intrepid Education @Intrepid_Edu]

I recall a faculty meeting on the extensive usage of technology, a few years before the discourse became ubiquitous. Upon suggesting a reduction of technology usage, and proposing a moderate solution of designating specific days as technology-free, I was, unsurprisingly met with stern opposition. What surprised me at the time, though it perhaps should not have, was that the dissent was not so much motivated by the oft-cited need for technology in the name of “twenty-first century skills.” Rather, my colleagues simply observed that technology was a, if not the, primary means of presenting the knowledge that they had been assigned to teach. Textbooks, assignments, various softwares, and of course a catalogue of videos were all referenced by various teachers as “essential” for their classes. There was no way, so they perceived, that the one-to-one laptops could sit idly for but a day.

After some reflection, what was most unsettling about this experience was not that the teachers were defending the technology out of fervor for it, but rather an impression that they would fail to be effective without it. As a matter of fact, many of these people surely would have supported my proposal had they not felt so bound to teach technologically. It was as if they themselves, like the students, were digital natives with no recollection of a previous age. Clearly, some of these teachers would have been old enough to have been teaching prior to the digital saturation of today, yet not one of them made a single reference to an analogue or otherwise “traditional” alternative. While the dialogue is finally recognizing the need to reevaluate technology in the classroom, one missing component of that discussion is the urgent need to train and retrain teachers in just how to teach without the gadgets.

[James Gifford @jrgifford]

@businessbarista #10

[Aaron M. Renn 🇺🇸 @aaron_renn]

"I really think people ought to take seriously the idea that we’ve been in a 75-year rolling moral panic about the influence of television on society and the critics have more or less been correct all along."

[Nick Dobos @NickADobos]

People are still anchor'ed on code being expensive

Oh no the ai wrote slop architecture
So?
Delete it & generate 5 more versions
Ask it to be good lol

Trying stuff and seeing how it comes together is how you build. Not one preplanned step, but 200 steps forward, 100 steps back

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

One thing about D.C. I've noticed over the years is that the vast majority of lawmakers and staffers in both parties really don't grasp how stressful it is for most families at the start of the school year.

I don't mean moderately stressful or inconvenient. I don't mean that parents are saying "damn, this keeps getting more expensive" and moving on with their day.

I mean that there are tens of millions of families in this country who stress out big time over school supplies -- as in: it's a dark cloud hanging over this time of year.

School supplies, back-to-school clothes, myriad fees for clubs and activities. A lot of families simply cannot afford all the costs that stack up.

If you've never seen a parent cry because they realize they can't afford all the things their kid needs at the start of the school year, you don't understand the scope of this problem.

[Josh Pigford @Shpigford]

amazing technical write up on https://t.co/Q9XJssQEjn!

[Kostas Moros @MorosKostas]

Again, nobody can stop this runaway train because stopping it requires taking an axe to social security and medicare, or imposing 40% tax rates on the middle class.

Even if one party tried, they'd get crushed in the very next election.

The deficit is not going to shrink in any real way, and every President will have bigger deficits than the last until we have a debt crisis.

While some Presidents are certainly more reckless than others (e.g., calling for even massive spending), the primary fault for these increasing deficits is the immaturity of the voters.