MALCOLM

Coffee maxi | Engineering @alliance | Founder @ATXDAO

[Chess.com @chesscom]

Ask for that raise.
Send that risky text.
Sacrifice your rook.

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@birk - CI optimizations
- oxlint rules
- E2E testing only
- State machines
- Strong logging
- Incrementally prune code/docs
- Document golden examples and technical vision
- IaC

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

The bottleneck is now CI, auto-merge on a trustable risk threshold, verifiability, adequate biz/product context

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

Opus 5.5 is the first model I’ve let off the leash

With the right verification, guard rails, etc I can trust it to own tasks end to end and feel confident

Step function improvement over the last/current gen models

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@oderajoseph Wasted potential 😭

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

The gaming industry showcases the new feature death spiral well because usage/popularity is easy to observe

1. Create great game
2. Add features no one asked for
3. Don’t actually listen to power use group
4. Think new feature = improvement
5. Lose identity and loyalty
6. Slow death by repeating 2-5

See: COD, Halo, Destiny

[Pete Kim @petejkim]

every project management software starts out really nice but eventually gets JIRA-fied as they add more and more features I really don't care about. I switch to a new one, and then the same thing happens.

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@Selkis_2028 gg

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@Arikalabs Similar thing happened with moving from REST APIs to GraphQL

Sounds good in theory but in practice we revert back to ole reliable

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@petejkim First 2 hit like crack when they came out

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@SmokeEquity @asukagrypr That’s sort of the problem. The noise in hiring now is outlandish. Everyone can LARP and have a good resume now. Very very difficult to parse out whose actually good and promising

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@forgebitz @can1357 First time seeing SaaS reinvented from first principles

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

New meta for designing better UI/UX:

Pretend Steve Jobs is standing behind you with a gun to your head. If the experience is poor he'll pull the trigger and end your bloodline

[kitze 🛠️ tinkerer.club @thekitze]

steve jobs would’ve personally tied you to a meeting room whiteboard and then shot you in the back of the head

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@Jason_A_Scharf @johnternus Probably there for F1 this weekend and the timing lined up. I don’t think it’s that deep

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

tern+omp UI is 🐐

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

Reminder to do some agent clean up every once in a while

660GB -> 13GB

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@catalinmpit Share the prompt you used. Otherwise going to chalk this up as a skill issue

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

A lot of talented engineering energy is being wasted on duplicative projects atm

Agent infra feels crowded

I think we'll look back on this era and feel that the industry wasn't ambitious enough

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@charliermarsh Reading for long periods of time has been the only thing that has helped me restore my attention span

Between agents, socials, and everything fighting for my dopamine, its a battle to keep it in tact

Have to put the phone somewhere else too because the brain fiends for it

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

@butter6868 It’s hard to think big picture while deep in managing agent execution

Have to force myself to zoom out and talk through what’s valuable to recalibrate on what to exert energy on

[MALCOLM @mxlcolm]

Being an elite software engineer now means being a strong product manager and designer as well

Its easy to be a 10x engineer in terms of code output

The next evolution is being a triple threat engineer