Any conversation

It's not clear, based on personal experience, how long - if it all - the software development field will value devs who actually enjoy the work. Most people I know are producing mostly AI work and there's an obvious skill decline that's resulted from it. 1/?

But does it matter if your boss doesn't care? Or if their boss doesn't care? If the paychecks keep coming who cares? What's the point of choosing the mountain if the "joy" just means more hours on screen that could have been spent elsewhere? 2/?

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I got into doing dev work, because I thought it was fun to learn and do and I genuinely enjoyed hanging out with others who felt the same. Now, more than ever, I realize how few people feel the same. And, now - more than ever, I realize that no on cares if I feel that way. 3/?

Bosses and their bosses care more about tickets moved and LoC written than quality or knowledgeable employees. 4/4

It never did. Before AI people did webslop in node.js, before that people were slopping in Java. AI changes surprisingly little.

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Only if you buy into the narrative that AI is "just another layer of abstraction." Which of course, it isn't.

No, it obviously isn't that. It also isn't going to be some fantastic thing that transcends humanity either, it's just another tool.

When I was 10, I thought I'd be a scientist I wanted to tinker in a lab, doing something with beakers and bunsen burners Making a difference. As an adult, I sit in meetings and discuss who to fire next I tinker with spreadsheets, doing something with LLMs and JIRA Be enthusiastic

As young kid I dreamed of working with reel-to-reel machines Cutting/splicing tape, happy accidents As a teen I couldn't afford reel-to-reel but got decent with multi-track cassettes Everyone was telling me digital was The Way (tm) In my 30s, I finally learned how to use a DAW properly In my 40s, I'm back to playing around with multi-tracks cassettes There is no money in it, but I'm enthusiastic as I can be (this is not so much as direct response as simply a response)

I find myself building bespoke tooling for my own and workflows these days, not only because of the obvious reason of software being so much cheaper to build, but also because there are SO MANY options for solving any given problem that it feels impossible to evaluate all of them. If it's not a crucial piece of tech for a work problem then it often feels like paving my own way is both cheaper mentally (kind of amazing that's true these days) and probably a better fit.

..then of course I have to contend with - "Is this going to be a maintenance nightmare in the future?" and then I still usually conclude "no, the maintenance will be aided by the same approach that the construction was". It's interesting how dramatically and quickly the scales have changed in this equation - and for such a wide range of software.

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For example, I am looking for a coding agent coordinator with a particular (but not all that insane) set of requirements. I used both Claude and Perplexity to show me options and break them down by fit against my requirements. I got completely different lists! No overlap! And no perfect fits.

It will become increasingly harder to find niche markets for software when those people can just build it themselves exactly how they want it. In the end, people want to accomplish tasks, and the AI is going to be building the software on-the-fly exactly for that task, why do we need generic software that may or may not be a fit?

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Yeah. It makes me think that protocols for exchanging data between apps will become even more important in that landscape. But maybe, not - maybe each exchange is another bespoke AI-driven implementation?

Protocols, infrastructure, containers, those kinds of things. I was actually playing around with an idea for a minimal markup language + runtime that can be utilized by AI to spin up apps more easily, and brainstorming it with ChatGPT, I have a feeling something like that will appear soon to complement MCP.

created a poll:

How often do you your , typically?

Twice a day or more57%

Once a day14%

A few times a week0%

Rarely or never29%

7 voted

Testing, testing…

You forgot the “one, two, three”. :-)

HelloWorld show code

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()
formatted_time = now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
print("Formatted:", formatted_time)

Wow

Formatted: 2026-08-28 07:22:42

turns out the power of exclamation mark thing in bash is bigger than !$ and !!. i learned a few tricks from , worth reading!

I was contemplating pwc372, p2 and came up with “- 1+&/-/'(&'(?x)=x)@0 -1” (goal). Conceptually I like it, but maybe it can be simplified further?

I sit in meetings all day long, I roll my eyes and die a bit and synergize and circle back inner life sacrosanct outer face smiling stone no need to rush: executives don't need to work just synergize and circle back

So annoyed that reddit is gating read-access to it's threads. What's up with that?? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ (thx ascii-art)

it’s time! y’all! ) ( ( ) ) ) ( ( _______)_ .-’---------| ( C|/\/\/\/\/| ‘-./\/\/\/\/| ‘_________’ ‘-------’

;,' _o_ ;:;' ,-.'---`.__ ; ((j`=====',-' `-\ / `-=-'

Updates on Cheltenham Open Data

“Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.” - David Deutsch

I'm trying to construct an argument that LLMs are like a chess engine. People still play chess. But somehow this falls short.

New in agenttop.dev : panels open in your . 🤹‍♂️ • Any panel can now split into its own pane, live, beside the table. • Works with all the popular multiplexers: , , 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗸𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆. • run a panel on its own: agent-top mcp, agent-top slow, agent-top fails, agent-top advice. ➕ The # MCP panel also lists the orphaned MCP processes that outlived their agent and are still eating memory.

I'm not an optimist, just a pessimist who's still proactive: I don't think things are going to get better, but I just can't talk myself into giving up yet.

Before AI, coding was my creative outlet. Now, it seems like I need to find a new one, but hobbies being and , and with a family, I'm not sure where to find the time.

Is there a terminal app for viewing textlog?? Kind of hate browsers.

There is: github.com/stagas/textlog-tui

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just started using it and this comment is coming from there, thanks for the link

Hi! welcome! there is one that is . Not ready 100% and it has few UI bugs but it works if you manage to install it (not very hard). No automatic build process yet.

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dope if I find any bugs I'll PR them

😍

Finally watched Project Hail Mary. Easily one of my top 5 favourite films but it’s still not nearly as good as the book — I feel like the cut some pretty important scenes

It's the first film in a long time that I enjoyed.

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I loved the book and I’m always fearful when a movie script is developed and a movie produced, so my relief after I saw the movie was immense. I too feel they’ve cut-out some bits, but the main thing that a book almost always takes my breath away with is fueling my imagination. A movie would (possibly) never nail that aspect.

I just watched it as well. It was fun. There were a number of things that I felt weren't explained well and broke my suspension of disbelief; I haven't read the book, but I found myself really curious whether the book takes the time to justify things more. Obviously, the movie has a lot of pressure to rush to the next "big moment".

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