Carl Alexander

Currently building @YmirApp in public. I tweet about bootstrapping, programming, devops. Avid memer. Often confused with his more handsome cardboard double.

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

Let's talk about what it's like to contribute to WordPress outside of the project itself.

I've been doing it out of my own pocket for over a decade and it's been a struggle.

It's made me think a lot about open source sustainability in WordPress.

So here's a 🧵 and a warning 🤣

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@jessethanley @PlanetScale If I'm reading this, that's just above 10% of what you provisioned? So plenty of cozy room for you 😅

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@matthieunapoli @enunomaduro Very excited to move from Dusk to this soon 🚀

[Open Channels FM Podcast Network @OpenChannelsFM]

Watch and listen to it next week 🎧

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

Good read. Talked about my burnout in @OpenChannelsFM yesterday. Kinda related.

"I use AI all the time. I like AI. The point I'm making is to not blindly accept results. Think. Analyze. Learn."

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

I've got an agent in a loop optimizing a renderer with the goal to minimize frame times (and tests to measure). It got times down from 88ms to 2ms and allocations down from ~150K to 500. Sounds good, right? Wrong. This is exactly why agent psychosis is a big fucking problem.

As an experiment, I rewrote the Ghostty core render state in Go, with access to identically laid out data structures as Ghostty and the exact same validation tests. I made a purposely naive renderer (simple, correct, but slow). 88ms per frame with 150,000 allocations (horrendous, lol)!

I then kickstarted a Ralph loop to bring the frame times down. I told it it can't modify input data structures or the public API or tests (they're correct), but it can do anything else it wants. It got to work.

It has worked for about 4 hours. I've spent around $350 on this experiment so far. The results?

88ms => 1.5ms
150K allocs => ~500 allocs

Incredible right? Nope.

My hand-written renderer I ported has frame times (same benchmark) of ~20us (0.020ms) and 0 allocations in the update path.

This is the problem with psychosis and lacking systems understanding. If you don't understand the system, you're going to accept that this is an incredible result. If you understand the system, you'll see better solutions immediately and can do roughly 75x better on throughput.

The people who blindly trust agent output are in the former camp. They're sheeple, overdrinking from a fountain of mediocrity.

Standard disclaimer: I use AI all the time. I like AI. The point I'm making is to not blindly accept results. Think. Analyze. Learn.

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

🥹🥹

[Marc Lou @marclou]

Your daily reminder that entrepreneurship is hard.

n = 7,174 startups

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@jessethanley @frncsbkr @aarondfrancis Yeah, I do the same thing. I have the business and friends server outside. Everything else shoved into groups and muted 🤣

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@mikemcalister What a shame I literally just got XM6s a few weeks ago 🥲

But yeah, Sony is great 💖

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

Why I loved being in Tokyo so much 😅

[Marc Lou @marclou]

Asia timezone is the best for productivity.

I wake up while the rest of the world is asleep and get 4 hours of deep work done in the AM, without the temptation to go online.

Totally recommended ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Open Channels FM Podcast Network @OpenChannelsFM]

New Open Web Conversations epsiode with host @twigpress and guest Diana Todea with @VictoriaMetrics. Listen into a great conversation about DevRel careers, neurodiversity in tech, open source community, and OpenTelemetry.

https://t.co/0Y7taZgTA7

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@MostlyTechPod @aarondfrancis It will be hard to ever top that ad transition. I died laughing when I heard it 🤣

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@thekitze @dannypostma I'm not even sure I want 5 minutes of the feed 😅

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@AlexStandiford Still doing podcasts with @zstepek! We could do something this month if you want! You can bug @BobWP about it too haha

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@aarondfrancis @SabatinoMasala First time I had to fast forward. Insane 😅

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@jessethanley @MostlyTechPod @IanLandsman @aarondfrancis I love the play by play of this thread 🤣

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@IanLandsman @markjaquith It blows my mind they decided we had enough of Tony Gilroy after Andor

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@adamwathan @mateusjatenee Wrote about this in my last year in review after I herniated my back.

Read back mechanic by McGill. I do McGill big 3 5 times a week for every workout. I liked low back ability too.

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@yongfook I worked out of the Google office a lot. I had a few Starbucks I liked to go to.

Enjoy Tokyo! Miss it a lot 🥲

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@patrickposner_ @YmirApp Thanks!! 💖

Yeah, @builtfasthost is working on making it accessible. I'm grateful for the partnership. I think long term AI will matter less if people aren't as technical for the self-serve part.

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

Feel this one in my bones. I'd still take the 100x harder any day.

[˗ˏˋ Jesse Hanley ˎˊ˗ @jessethanley]

@RhysSullivan $0-10k/m is the 100x harder than getting a job.

$10-100k is easier than maintaining a job.

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@patrickposner_ Well, I don't think the grind ever stops. Been grinding for 15 years and I still don't have 10k/m. @YmirApp is on year 5.

So many people never make it to 10k/m though, I already feel like I got so much further than most reaching 1k/m. 😅

[Carl Alexander @twigpress]

@gridpane To be fair, I haven't tried to get a job recently. But I've chewed so much glass 😅