Rafay Aleem

Now: @affirm Before: @faire_wholesale, @PointClickCare, @Shopify, @wiivvit, @dubizzle Alma mater: @SFU @nustseecs

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

When I was writing Unreal Engine 1, my time was divided as follows:

- Around 30% went to seriously deep coding on hard problems: assembly language texture mappers, C++ BSP trees, data persistence, object oriented systems design, and networking.

- Around 70% was just typing and refactoring large bodies of code needed for a complete engine feature set. This was not hard, and while I was doing it my mind was mostly on the deeper coding topics, thinking and planning for what's next. It didn't feel much different from vibe coding today, except that it was just me typing code on an IBM Model M keyboard rather than prompting it and reviewing the results.

So, it has always seemed perfectly logical that we would rely on AI for that 70%, once the AI could do it with a similar quality standard as we could, which has never been perfection. It came as no surprise that, after a few years of AI model evolution, it was able to take the reigns on that 70% and free up programmers' time for more valuable tasks.

What's more of a surprise is the emergence of AI as a sort of insta-Carmack able to solve hard technical problems quite cleverly and often cleanly, and that it's able to reason about and work in complex 3D scenes both by operating the tools and by directly understanding the raw data files.

I abandoned assembly language in 1998 when out-of-order CPUs made much simpler C/C++ code faster, and never I missed it. If prompting through architectural documents, concept art, and design plans can transcend typing code and tweaking vertices, that will enable developers to spend their time on higher-level, higher value technical and creative tasks.

What matters is the end product, whether it's a game or an engine. Anything developers can do to try out more ideas and make better software and games faster is a win for everyone.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@ahmedelgabri @superlogical I gotta try Rex then, agree herdr is a minor upgrade if you are coming from tmux (my case as well)

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

https://t.co/JwqsqO00Sx

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@theo I have and wondering t3 desktop nightly doesn’t automatically port forward the service that’s running on the ssh’d server. Is it by design or broken? I started my experience with t3 on the nightly because of Pi support.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@mattlam_ @coding_jam @pidotdev I actually noticed it still being very token efficient but that's annecdotal. Hate going back to any other harness except Pi now.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@mattlam_ @coding_jam @pidotdev Can also confirm the bridge is working very well for me for as long as Anthropic doesn’t go back to pulling AgentSDK out of subscriptions

[Pi @pidotdev]

A pretty big change is that Pi now has MCP at the core. How is this even possible? What made us change our way? https://t.co/q7M4oM49L1

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@ahmedelgabri Try using Anthropic models via pi using this extension. Works great even with subscriptions since Anthropic is not blocking AgentSDK usage for now. https://t.co/mgjwNXaakx

[Matei Zaharia @matei_zaharia]

Agent harnesses seem to make a lot of difference, at least for cost, even on open source coding benchmarks. Melissa’s research project digs into why.

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

We just announced Canada’s new Productivity Mega Deduction.

This cuts Canada’s marginal effective tax rate from 13% to 6.4% on new business investment — the lowest of any major economy in the world.

Canada is building big — and becoming the best place in the world to build.

More here: https://t.co/hlPD31AVnz

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

I can’t stress enough how little an idea matters compared to the agency of the people executing the idea.

I have had the privilege of knowing and sometimes even working with some of the most successful people (by various metrics).

The difference between mediocre and excellent work and outcomes is predominantly one of agency.

In practice this means: they dont wait for things to happen to them they go out and make things happen for them.

They don’t wait for someone else to do something, for someone to teach them, for someone to give them the path, etc. They just go out and find a way to do it.

I think the single biggest superpower these people have is the realization/belief that the world around them is completely mutable. Most everything that happens is because a person made it happen.

I used to tell people to look around the room you’re sitting in. Look at everything. Every noun. It almost all exists because a person willed it into existence. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same.

I see people online all the time dismissing someone else’s success because “I had that idea first” or whatever. I mean… yeah? If so then the difference is… you. So a bit of a self own whenever I hear that.

Number one tip: act with agency.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@fnthawar Couldn't agree more!

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

Hey @ibrahim32597394, thanks for the VS Code Editor context extension. I have a draft PR going on here to support this over ssh and also support passing vscode integrated browser context to Pi which is very helpful for frontend edits. Please have a look: https://t.co/0vR8IEzGfi

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@ahmedelgabri @salemsayed I have both subscriptions for a while but don’t like Codex much, been using OpenCode with Plus subscription but I find it consumes excessive tokens for whatever reason, although I do like its LSP integration. Going to give Pi a shot with the Plus.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@ahmedelgabri @salemsayed Have you tried Astra in OpenCode or is Pi your non-Claude harness of choice?

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@karpathy Have you tried qmd with this workflow? It might be your search engine replacement.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

The most AI proof job in the world is entrepreneurship

Use it to make products and services. Build more companies. On Shopify or otherwise.

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

An opinionated workflow showcasing how I used Claude and Obsidian together to help with my personal tax filing in Canada
https://t.co/6zd6ZzdUPo

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

@sanelo_ That’s a fair take, kind of doing that at some level already with Claude code and PLAN.md

[Rafay Aleem @mrafayaleem]

It feels like humans will always be needed to control the amount of entropy that AI agents will add. Maybe, that will be our new job description?