Shan Randhawa

Dad of 2 in CA

[Dr Milan Milanović @milan_milanovic]

Someone builds a project management tool with Claude Code over a weekend. Ships it. Tweets "just replaced Jira."

The app works. One user, happy path, localhost. Then two people edit the same record simultaneously, and the data is silently corrupted. They don't know what an optimistic lock is. They never needed to before.

The prototype is maybe 1% of what makes software actually work. The other 99% is what you find after real users show up: race conditions, failed transactions, sessions expiring at the wrong moment, a payment webhook that fires twice and charges someone double. AI didn't cover any of that. It built exactly what you asked for.

And the confidence is the worst part. "Just need to adjust a few things before we go live." The few things you need to adjust are the product. That's like laying a foundation and telling people you basically built the house.

Vibe coding works. For personal tools, throwaway scripts, and prototypes you'll never put in front of paying users, it's genuinely fast and good enough. I use it. But there's a hard ceiling, and it shows up the moment the stakes get real.

Agentic engineering is a different discipline. You're not prompting for code. You're decomposing problems, designing system boundaries, writing specs precise enough that the agent doesn't go sideways. You review everything it builds, because it will make mistakes that only look wrong if you know what correct looks like. You guide it. You catch what it misses.

If you don't know what a distributed transaction is, the agent won't save you. It'll generate something broken with complete confidence, and you won't know until production.

The hard part of software was never writing the first 200 lines.

It never was.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

Hybrid/EREV is the way for large daily drivers at least for the next 10 years.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

NEWS: Ford has officially announced that it is cancelling its all-electric F-150 Lightning.

Ford CEO Jim Farley: “Instead of plowing billions into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting.”

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

Automakers: make an EV pickup with 50-100 miles of range plus built in gas range extender.

Basically half model 3 half F-150.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

New newsletter: The death of partying in the USA

The latest American Time Use Survey came out last month. I wanted to follow up on @elcush's declaration that Americans need to party more. The new data confirms: America's social crisis is dire.

- Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent.
- Young people aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties in 2024 than they did in 2003.

More charts and analysis on the 50-year collapse of the social calendar in the link below.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

My son has been building levels in Geometry Dash and his level was bugging out the other day (kept ending at 11.89 seconds). We asked ChatGPT for help and it hallucinated 5 suggestions to fix it. But it can write code ok.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

@josephismailyan @deplyrcorp Now do it while riding a bike.

[Joe @josephismailyan]

Buddy at the gym didn't know what "vibe coding" is so we tested it out in his Tesla. We pushed a giant @deplyrcorp update today for better ✨vibing✨

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

I had a fun interview on the @Freakonomics podcast discussing conservative tax myths, liberal tax myths, deficit reduction, and whether my long Washington DC career as a deficit hawk has been a miserable failure. Transcript and audio recording below: https://t.co/Qh9dTGaHGk

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

The sound of tomorrow’s economy churning away

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

I love how awesome Google Sheets has become. Also Docs. I already loved these products, but they continue to get better.

Great stuff @googledocs team.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

@pmarca good shift

[deplyr @deplyrcorp]

Deplyr lets businesses use AI to build micro apps with connections to popular apps and authentication built in. Try it out at https://t.co/lU1Lvk6BfW

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

@DearS_o_n @RomainLaffitau 100%

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

Deplyr example in action. A vision micro app for speeding up seed counting and weighing. This app took less than 20 mins to build and deploy with AI + Deplyr. Stay tuned for the how-to.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

@ycombinator @koomen Agreed, software built for people will be built by people, even if AI is writing the code.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

@Rixhabh__ Great list Rishabh. Check out @deplyrcorp, it lets orgs use AI to build and internally share micro apps for productivity. Soon to be in open beta.

[Joe @josephismailyan]

Who says you can't have a little fun while building?

I made this deepseek minigame, inspired how the stock market reacted yesterday.

Link to play: https://t.co/yJIYhFO6nu

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

Short demo of how Deplyr’s AI code editor makes it super easy to perfect your micro app. In this case we have a fitness micro app that helps you track your workouts with a Google Sheet.

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

And here's a link to the game if you want to check it out: https://t.co/sdDtwU9Epj

[Shan Randhawa @shansr5]

Here’s a fun demo (spacex flappy bird on mars) of what a Deplyr app consists of and how the AI chat makes it super easy to edit/perfect your app.

https://t.co/FdgD4DBHxx