Matthew Epps

Dev @hyperbolic_labs | Ex @metamask

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW I’m most afraid of the background music that you were able to generate 😂

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

―Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize in Physics 1922

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW Thank you for being an amazing leader for the team and a voice of reason as we navigated a lot of uncertainty. I wish the best on your next adventure! I know you will do a great job.

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW Is a corollary to avoid bs?

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

Many people say taste isn’t a skill and can’t be trained. That’s wrong.

Steve Jobs said, “Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you’re doing.”

The key is exposing yourself to the best things.

Without taking the calligraphy class at Reed College, he wouldn’t have the taste for what makes great typography great.

The same rule applies to any field.

Want to develop taste in product? Expose yourself to the best products.

Want to develop taste in coding? Expose yourself to the best code.

Believing that taste is a trainable skill is the first step.

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW @AnthropicAI I always find it ironic that these labs claiming to deprecate engineering are hiring more engineers

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

“Vibe coding” is wildly overloaded.

Originally it meant “you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.” (from @karpathy)

If you review even a single line the AI writes, that is not vibe coding. So claims like “software engineers are killed” or “Anthropic engineers vibe-coded everything” are simply wrong.

A better term is “lucid coding” in my mind. Like lucid dreaming, the AI does most of the work, but you stay aware, intentional, and in control. You steer the AI and bake in your taste and judgment.

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

Andrej’s advice on becoming an expert at anything:
- take on concrete projects
- learn on demand
- teach in your own words
- compete only with your past self

He is not describing school.
He is describing side projects.

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

Side projects give people life, main projects take life away

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

Claude Code was a side project at Anthropic.
ChatGPT was a side project at OpenAI.
PyTorch was a side project at Meta.
Gmail was a side project at Google.

Side projects are the only place where taste, curiosity, and agency fully compound.

[Grady Booch @Grady_Booch]

The entire history of software engineering is one of rising levels of abstraction.

This is as it was, is now, and always shall be.

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

Claude Code is the closest thing to Jarvis in Iron Man.

My ultimate vision for AI agents is Jarvis. Today, Claude Code still lives inside the computer. It has no eyes, ears, or sense of the physical world.

Once it can see what you see and hear what you hear, it becomes dramatically more useful.

That day will come.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

What makes a standout software engineer?

Charles-Axel Dein (@d3in) was engineer no 20 at Uber, hired me there and was my manager for years (a great manager, I might add.) He answers, shares what a standout engineer looks like at CloudKitchens, today:

[Nikunj Kothari @nikunj]

In today's 996 chest-thumping culture, don't forget about the quiet ones keeping your company together..

[martin_casado @martin_casado]

AI coding is the definitive demonstration that the "happy path" of coding really is only about 20% of the total work to ship something of quality.

[Jeremy Howard @jeremyphoward]

Tech debt is like other debt:
- Longer you hold it, more it costs
- Costs accumulate over time
- Pay it off ASAP
- Sometimes worth taking on debt, to do something important faster
- Some take on debt without thinking: can I pay it off
- Taking on more debt to pay off debt is bad

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW @Ahoo_Ahuu Technical (janitorial) staff

[Naval @naval]

Good teams throw away far more product than they keep.

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Yuchenj_UW But I love my wife 🥲

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@zjasper I love how Elon so confidently says grok4 "never gets math/physics exam questions wrong" and in another post, how it is beyond phd level in every field. Only to have it fail at an undergraduate level question.

[Matthew Epps @mepps32]

@Aanu_2As @jimmywontgiveup @Harnie3rdWEB @hyperbolic_labs @KaiHuang @zjasper @d_u_bbles ".edu" top-level domains (aka ends in ".edu")