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Login to tech Twitter and you’ll see posts bragging about 40k LoC per day from an unnamed YC member 😛. There’s some hilarity to it, but the vibe shift is real. At Jenni, we’re shipping 3-5x faster than mid-2025. I perpetually have unread notifications in our #shipped channel. Bugs go from reported to resolved in […] The post The Middle Way appeared first on Marc Astbury.
There’s a recurring take doing the rounds on socials. Thought leaders declaring that AI has killed the design process (e.g. Lenny’s podcast). I personally think they’re wrong. But more importantly, I think most people (including designers) don’t know what they mean when they say “design process.” When pushed for specifics what they’re actually describing is […] The post The Design Process appeared first on Marc Astbury.
When reading history it’s tempting to hold the question “is this person good or evil?” in mind. With Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler the answer is clear. More often it is not. World leaders must make decisions where there are severe costs regardless of which path they choose. Reading Deng Xiaoping and The Transformation of China […] The post Notes on Deng Xiaoping appeared first on Marc Astbury.
As was the case in 2023, I’m back in Yunnan writing the annual review. This time sitting in Matchbox coffee shop in Shaxi, the sky is pure blue and the farmers fields below are a dusty yellow. My fingers are freezing as I type but the pain is negated by the joy of wearing a […] The post Annual Review 2025 appeared first on Marc Astbury.
Folders, in the digital sense, began life as an ingenious skeuomorphic metaphor. A digital stand-in for physical folders and filing cabinets pioneered by Xerox and first seen in their Alto machine. The metaphor helped early computer users map the new digital world onto something they already understood. After reading The Science of Managing our Digital […] The post Folders are dead, long live folders appeared first on Marc Astbury.
More in programming
An introduction to ZKeys: a new service that stores encryption keys off-site and automatically locks access to them if the client machines go offline for a long period of time.
Google told K-12 schools they could turn off AI, but only if they gave up search too. That isn’t integration. It’s holding education for ransom.
Once a year at my church, I usually give one sermon. I was asked to tie the theme to a young adult retreat we had taken to the Sunshine Coast. My first experience giving a sermon was many years ago at my old home church in El Monte, California. It was a Vietnamese-American church, but…
Practical tools for design engineers to explore possible futures through speculative design
As with my last post on AI, let me open with a statement: Just because most people hold AI a certain way, doesn’t mean that we always must, either now or in the future. As I noted in that piece, and my shades of gray post, I am well aware — and agree with — … Continue reading Must we always use LLMs this way? →
