Gordon Weakliem
@2hardproblems.bsky.social
Software and other stuff
"There are two hard problems in CS: naming things, cache expiration, and off by one errors"
http://eighty-twenty.net
"There are two hard problems in CS: naming things, cache expiration, and off by one errors"
http://eighty-twenty.net
The same advice was passed around 20 years ago. Then mobile and the whole JS explosion happened. Every generation gets to rediscover the same lessons.
I'm confused though, didn't everyone agree that a liberal arts degree is worthless?
www.businessinsider.com/yann-lecun-a...
I'm confused though, didn't everyone agree that a liberal arts degree is worthless?
www.businessinsider.com/yann-lecun-a...
Yann LeCun's advice for young students wanting to go into AI
Former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun said current and prospective CS students need to focus on skills "with a long shelf life."
www.businessinsider.com
December 23, 2025 at 4:30 PM
The same advice was passed around 20 years ago. Then mobile and the whole JS explosion happened. Every generation gets to rediscover the same lessons.
I'm confused though, didn't everyone agree that a liberal arts degree is worthless?
www.businessinsider.com/yann-lecun-a...
I'm confused though, didn't everyone agree that a liberal arts degree is worthless?
www.businessinsider.com/yann-lecun-a...
Honestly it's really surprising that Meta or Google haven't built an internal model trained on their own code base (or samples). I'm not sure if the solution here would be training, or RAG, or MCP or something else?
Interesting: I am hearing both inside Meta and inside Google AI coding models simply don't work nearly as well as they do outside:
Models work great on greenfield projects and when using standard tooling.
Both Meta and Google have monoliths and non-standard tooling!
Models work great on greenfield projects and when using standard tooling.
Both Meta and Google have monoliths and non-standard tooling!
December 18, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Honestly it's really surprising that Meta or Google haven't built an internal model trained on their own code base (or samples). I'm not sure if the solution here would be training, or RAG, or MCP or something else?
Got my Reachy last night, up and running and passed a few basic tests. Assembly took about 2-3 hours as advertised. Camera seems very dark I’m wondering if it’ll be able to do facial recognition. The hand following app worked ok though. @hf.co
December 17, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Got my Reachy last night, up and running and passed a few basic tests. Assembly took about 2-3 hours as advertised. Camera seems very dark I’m wondering if it’ll be able to do facial recognition. The hand following app worked ok though. @hf.co
Interesting interview with Steve Yegge. I didn’t realize he and Ryan Carson both work at Sourcegraph. I’d like to see an interview with both of them, they seem to have a bit different approaches.
youtu.be/s96O9oWI_tI?...
youtu.be/s96O9oWI_tI?...
Beyond Instructions: How Beads Lets AI Agents Build Like Engineers
YouTube video by AI Tinkerers
youtu.be
December 15, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Interesting interview with Steve Yegge. I didn’t realize he and Ryan Carson both work at Sourcegraph. I’d like to see an interview with both of them, they seem to have a bit different approaches.
youtu.be/s96O9oWI_tI?...
youtu.be/s96O9oWI_tI?...
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
+1. Great article
I thoroughly recommend reading all of Cory Doctorow's recent speech on AI skepticism, it's crammed with new arguments and interesting new ways of thinking about these problems pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...
Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
December 7, 2025 at 11:12 PM
+1. Great article
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
What if nomads were never the outliers? globalnatives.substack.com/p/nomad-work-p… (yes. I enjoyed my nomad years: 2013-2018). #DigitalNomads #RemoteWork #flexibility
December 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
What if nomads were never the outliers? globalnatives.substack.com/p/nomad-work-p… (yes. I enjoyed my nomad years: 2013-2018). #DigitalNomads #RemoteWork #flexibility
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
Episode is live on blog:
thursdai.news/googlers
If you like the direct source, the pod is up on YT as well (feel free to sub)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eew...
And everywhere where you get your podcasts, just type ThursdAI
thursdai.news/googlers
If you like the direct source, the pod is up on YT as well (feel free to sub)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eew...
And everywhere where you get your podcasts, just type ThursdAI
ThursdAI Special: Google's Big week - Anti Gravity, Gemini 3 and Nano 🍌 with Kevin, Ammaar and Kat
In this special edition of ThursdAI recorded live from the AI Engineer Code Summit in New York, Alex sits down with the teams behind Google's massive week of...
www.youtube.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Episode is live on blog:
thursdai.news/googlers
If you like the direct source, the pod is up on YT as well (feel free to sub)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eew...
And everywhere where you get your podcasts, just type ThursdAI
thursdai.news/googlers
If you like the direct source, the pod is up on YT as well (feel free to sub)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eew...
And everywhere where you get your podcasts, just type ThursdAI
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
Those of you in the Fort Worth area should come and say hello! Sunday December 14 9a-12p. At Avoca Coffee 1311 Magnolia. Book signings, Q&A, fun all around!
December 1, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Those of you in the Fort Worth area should come and say hello! Sunday December 14 9a-12p. At Avoca Coffee 1311 Magnolia. Book signings, Q&A, fun all around!
Man we’ve paid the price in United tests (for example). It’s a lot of work to establish a deterministic environment, it feels like if your tests aren’t breaking you aren’t getting value
hot take: determinism is the opioid of the engineering masses
yes, it makes things easier. but it also costs in a lot of ways. so if you're paying the price for determinism, you'd better be getting hella value out of it
yes, it makes things easier. but it also costs in a lot of ways. so if you're paying the price for determinism, you'd better be getting hella value out of it
November 16, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Man we’ve paid the price in United tests (for example). It’s a lot of work to establish a deterministic environment, it feels like if your tests aren’t breaking you aren’t getting value
Cool, so if you're wealthy enough to afford a private jet, you're not affected by the ATC issues.
www.cnbc.com/2025/11/10/p...
www.cnbc.com/2025/11/10/p...
Private-jet demand is on the rise amid government shutdown, says Flexjet CEO
The FAA plans to curb private-jet traffic at 12 major U.S. airports starting Monday.
www.cnbc.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Cool, so if you're wealthy enough to afford a private jet, you're not affected by the ATC issues.
www.cnbc.com/2025/11/10/p...
www.cnbc.com/2025/11/10/p...
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
This sounds cynical—but represents a huge advance over empty “AGI” speculation.
It’s a political question, not a technical one. Without social equality models *cannot do* many kinds of work (eg, negotiate agreements or manage workers). So they will only be human-equivalent if we decide they are.
It’s a political question, not a technical one. Without social equality models *cannot do* many kinds of work (eg, negotiate agreements or manage workers). So they will only be human-equivalent if we decide they are.
intelligence is the thing which i have. admitting things are intelligent means considering them morally and socially equal to me. i will never consider a computer morally or socially equal to me. therefore no computer program will ever be intelligent
November 2, 2025 at 11:01 AM
This sounds cynical—but represents a huge advance over empty “AGI” speculation.
It’s a political question, not a technical one. Without social equality models *cannot do* many kinds of work (eg, negotiate agreements or manage workers). So they will only be human-equivalent if we decide they are.
It’s a political question, not a technical one. Without social equality models *cannot do* many kinds of work (eg, negotiate agreements or manage workers). So they will only be human-equivalent if we decide they are.
One analogy that worth thinking about: what is it like to live in a world where some people have superpowers?
October 23, 2025 at 1:02 AM
One analogy that worth thinking about: what is it like to live in a world where some people have superpowers?
"you should think of [an agent] almost like an employee or an intern that you would hire to work with you"
I completely agree with this, and I always try to frame working with an agent this way. The bit about animals vs ghosts is a really interesting analogy.
www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-kar...
I completely agree with this, and I always try to frame working with an agent this way. The bit about animals vs ghosts is a really interesting analogy.
www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-kar...
Andrej Karpathy — AGI is still a decade away
"The problems are tractable, but they're still difficult”
www.dwarkesh.com
October 22, 2025 at 10:41 PM
"you should think of [an agent] almost like an employee or an intern that you would hire to work with you"
I completely agree with this, and I always try to frame working with an agent this way. The bit about animals vs ghosts is a really interesting analogy.
www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-kar...
I completely agree with this, and I always try to frame working with an agent this way. The bit about animals vs ghosts is a really interesting analogy.
www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-kar...
“It is hard to know exactly what will happen to an industry build on an apprenticeship model when it no longer needs apprentices”
This newsletter is the result of a “screwup” caused by Money Stuff's “antiquated” computer system. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...
OpenAI Is Building a Banker
Also abstract copper, 777 Partners, in-kind Bitcoin ETFs and the AWS outage.
www.bloomberg.com
October 21, 2025 at 7:29 PM
“It is hard to know exactly what will happen to an industry build on an apprenticeship model when it no longer needs apprentices”
If you’re scared of agents, what do you do as an EM or PM faced with the output of a high performing team. Isn’t it the same problem?
Andrej Karpathy’s take on AI coding agents feels grounded. The industry’s chasing full autonomy when models still hallucinate too much.
Agents that churn out a thousand lines of code leave you either blindly trusting them or slogging through reviews. These tools should embrace their fallibility.
Agents that churn out a thousand lines of code leave you either blindly trusting them or slogging through reviews. These tools should embrace their fallibility.
October 19, 2025 at 11:37 PM
If you’re scared of agents, what do you do as an EM or PM faced with the output of a high performing team. Isn’t it the same problem?
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
it's kinda weird that all the software i am expected to use for work are all written by distributed teams, go, python, postgres, linux, chrome, k8s etc
and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way
and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way
October 13, 2025 at 5:00 PM
it's kinda weird that all the software i am expected to use for work are all written by distributed teams, go, python, postgres, linux, chrome, k8s etc
and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way
and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way
After all the shit happened in The Odyssey, Odysseus put an oar over his shoulder and marched inland until people asked what he was carrying & he knew he'd found where he belonged.
I just gave a project proposal to a prospective client organized into sprints. She asked what a sprint was.
I just gave a project proposal to a prospective client organized into sprints. She asked what a sprint was.
October 3, 2025 at 7:58 PM
After all the shit happened in The Odyssey, Odysseus put an oar over his shoulder and marched inland until people asked what he was carrying & he knew he'd found where he belonged.
I just gave a project proposal to a prospective client organized into sprints. She asked what a sprint was.
I just gave a project proposal to a prospective client organized into sprints. She asked what a sprint was.
People focus on the asbestos quote, and corporate America feels extremely broken. I like the closing: "It's a grab-bag of useful (sometimes very useful) tools that can sometimes make workers' lives better, when workers get to decide how and when they're used."
pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...
pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...
Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
September 30, 2025 at 12:56 PM
People focus on the asbestos quote, and corporate America feels extremely broken. I like the closing: "It's a grab-bag of useful (sometimes very useful) tools that can sometimes make workers' lives better, when workers get to decide how and when they're used."
pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...
pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
The paperback is ready!!!! Great Power. Questionable responsibility. When the capes are gone the burden remains. #readerscommunity #superheroes #shortstory #indieauthors
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSZ5QYR...
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSZ5QYR...
SUPERPOWERLESS
SUPERPOWERLESS [Salavon, Ian] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SUPERPOWERLESS
www.amazon.com
September 28, 2025 at 12:02 PM
The paperback is ready!!!! Great Power. Questionable responsibility. When the capes are gone the burden remains. #readerscommunity #superheroes #shortstory #indieauthors
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSZ5QYR...
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSZ5QYR...
Reposted by Gordon Weakliem
Meanwhile, I see deep questions on the AI side that should definitely warrant some humanities input. And I don't mean the usual ethics corner, but: how to design reasoning structure/flow, personality tuning (what is the "I" in the model?), rethinking tokenization. Won't happen for some time.
Keeping “digital humanities” together as a field is going to get so hard in the era of AI. The shear forces are intense: I see lots of humanities profs who were DH-friendly reposting Zitron.
And while E.Z. is a Limbaugh-tier thinker imo, they’re not wrong that AI is disrupting things they value. +
And while E.Z. is a Limbaugh-tier thinker imo, they’re not wrong that AI is disrupting things they value. +
September 4, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Meanwhile, I see deep questions on the AI side that should definitely warrant some humanities input. And I don't mean the usual ethics corner, but: how to design reasoning structure/flow, personality tuning (what is the "I" in the model?), rethinking tokenization. Won't happen for some time.
Maybe instead of forbidding using an LLM during a coding interview, we should make candidates use one that appears helpful but gives wrong answers, to test how a candidate's BS detector works.
September 2, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Maybe instead of forbidding using an LLM during a coding interview, we should make candidates use one that appears helpful but gives wrong answers, to test how a candidate's BS detector works.
Reading old performance reviews and came across a line - “Dare thinks being correct is more important than convincing people” which at the time struck me as absurd as what’s more important than being right?
Over time I learned if you can’t change what work happens then being correct doesn’t matter.
Over time I learned if you can’t change what work happens then being correct doesn’t matter.
September 1, 2025 at 3:59 PM