I don't write too often, so when I published this, I expected a few friends to read it and share their feelings. I've been blown away by how many people have commented, DMed, and emailed. Knowing how many people feel in their bones that *something needs to change* gives me hope.
charli xkcd@ky.fyi · 5mo agoI wrote about why I quit my job, and how weird and tiring tech feels these days.
I wrote about why I quit my job, and how weird and tiring tech feels these days.
Do I belong in tech anymore?
On quitting, the spread of AI, and the loss of an ideal.
ky.fyi
There are (sort of) two kinds of coders: those who see it as just a well-paying, stable job, and those who do it on nights and weekends because they love it, and it’s part of their identity. *Both* are under attack from bosses trying to put them out of work... www.anildash.com/2026/03/13/c... ...
anildash.com
Day 5 of doing Advent of Code 2024 in Haskell for no particular reason — I spent most of the day learning how to set up Docker devcontainers in VSCode, so that I could work on my Mac without installing everything. Worked great! Seems generally useful.
For some reason, I decided to teach myself Haskell by doing Advent of Code 2024. My impressions of Haskell after 3 days: 1. The reliance on linked lists + recursion feels very lisp 2. Seems like rust’s pattern matching was inspired by Haskell I wonder how it’ll hold up to graph traversal problems
I just published my first rust crate. It’s a library for serializing and deserializing protocol buffers. I don’t really intend other people to use it. But I use it in enough of my own projects, I wanted an easy way to share it. crates.io/crates/broto...
crates.io: Rust Package Registry
crates.io
It seems like the only way tech companies are able to compel AI usage is by coercion in performance review processes? (via The Information "AI Agenda" newsletter)
"But when the team looked at the employees’ actual work output, they found that the developers had completed tasks 20% slower when using AI than when working without it. Researchers were stunned. “No one expected that outcome. We didn’t even really consider a slowdown as a possibility.” 🎁link
David Mullin@rdmullin.bsky.social · 11mo agoOkay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!
The Majority AI View - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
anildash.com
“In a new report, management consultants Bain & Company found that despite being ‘one of the first areas to deploy generative AI,’ the ‘savings have been unremarkable’ in programming.”
AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds
The AI industry's claims about AI coding assistants boosting productivity significantly appear to be massively overblown, per a new report.
futurism.com
“When it comes to AI adoption, many companies aren’t guided by strategy but by ‘Fomo’,” said Haritha Khandabattu, senior director analyst at consultancy Gartner. www.ft.com/content/e93e...
America’s top companies keep talking about AI — but can’t explain the upsides
FT analysis of hundreds of filings suggests the S&P 500 businesses are clearer about the risks than benefits
ft.com
Two trials will be repeated endlessly despite always producing the same results: 1) Does UBI work? (yes) 2) Does AI improve productivity? (no)
M365 Copilot fails to up productivity in UK government trial
: AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don't bother with anything more complex
theregister.com
Some therapists are using AI during therapy sessions. They’re risking their clients’ trust and privacy in the process.
Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered.
Some therapists are using AI during therapy sessions. They’re risking their clients’ trust and privacy in the process.
technologyreview.com
we learned this already! there was about a one week period where everyone thought Google Glass was neat and then the realization kicked in and people were like, wait a minute, this is a privacy nightmare and the whole thing flopped
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last yr.Yeah, we’d be fighting. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.
The A.I.-Profits Drought and the Lessons of History
Like the steam engine, electricity, and computers, generative artificial intelligence could take longer than expected to transform the economy.
newyorker.com
the thought of ai-generated music hurts my soul. same with art really. i’ll take a stick figure drawing or a three-chord punk song over an ai thing anyday. adding in predictions from statistical models just dilutes the message. i’d rather someone send me the prompt than its output
the thing that frustrates me is how often people conflate “RTO” with “working in-person” if i had the option of RTO with a 20 minute commute and my whole current team in person, i’d take it but my last job tried to make me “RTO” to take remote meetings from a corporate office, and i quit instead
Charity Majors@charity.wtf · last yr.I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly, so I asked, "You mean as in, you are doing RTO in order to *retain* people?" "Yeah, that and a bunch of other interrelated reasons around culture + productivity. Most of the people we hired into an all-remote team during the pandemic failed to work out."
User taps → API stalls → UI hangs → User bails. Sound familiar? 🙌 Honeycomb Frontend Observability now supports mobile. Fix prod mobile issues with deep, end-to-end visibility ✅ See user journeys from tap to backend ✅ OTel-based SDKs — no lock-in ✅ No seat/custom metric fees tinyurl.com/2ccpc5nm
Lots of folks know about Scotty always padding his time estimates. But today I saw the episode of Stargate SG-1 where Siler says it’ll take 24 hours to fix the gate. Hammond says “You have 12.” And then Siler says “No, sir, that’s not how it works. It’ll take 24.” I respect that.
They finally made a Gladiator 2? When I lived in Beijing 20 years ago, one of my friends bought a “Gladiator 2” VCD from a guy on a street corner. I said “There is no Gladiator 2!” But he insisted I was ignorant. Anyway, he ended up with a VCD full of episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess.
On macOS, I still use bash, because I’ve never seen any compelling reason to learn zsh, especially when it comes to config files and stuff. Am I missing out on anything?
