Holding my YubiKey right, like an adult

Turns out, posting `cccccdcdgvabcttbifbktebucugkvndfrbekidlhfruh` into a Slack chat full of Adults you respect is kinda embarrassing...

jerodsanto.net

Reflections on Reflections on Trusting Trust

As I made my way through Socket’s onboarding materials, I was pleasantly surprised to see Ken Thompson’s Reflections on Trusting Trust in the list of required reading. I read this essay as part of my ...

jerodsanto.net

Jerod Santo Joins Socket as Head of Media

Allow myself to introduce... myself.

socket.dev

Things of interest (August 2026)

Here’s a smattering of things I found interesting lately. Tools, articles, silos, and insults to all programmers. Silo I haven’t been this into a sci-fi / mystery box series since Lost.1 The setup: ...

jerodsanto.net

Make Claude Code sufferable with this one easy trick

With every auto-update, Claude Code has gotten better at writing software. What it hasn’t improved at, tragically, is communicating to me in a way that doesn’t make me want to punch it square in the /...

jerodsanto.net

Things of interest (July 2026)

Here’s a smattering of things I found interesting lately. Tools, articles, bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica. SVG Backgrounds SVG has slowly, steadily become one of my absolute favorite web technolo...

jerodsanto.net

Of two minds about agentic coding

Sometimes, while agentic coding… I feel like Michael Scott: Dunder Mifflin’s best salesman who got Peter principle’d into a management role1 he’s kinda terrible at and now spends his days watching oth...

jerodsanto.net

One year of living in the future

A year ago this week, I hopped a flight to Denver1 to pick up my shiny, new Tesla Model 3. The 8-hour ride2 home was a revelation. I’ve never been a car guy for the same reason I’ve never been a fash...

jerodsanto.net

Claude's writing style has me on edge

I was enjoying Benn Stancil’s latest column1 on generalized vs specialized models (his typical, punchy, link-ridden screed) until this paragraph jump scared me: And that’s the turn nobody priced in. ...

jerodsanto.net

GitHub under siege

My first thought when I saw Cursor’s Origin announcement last week was: You could see this move coming a mile away My second thought was: Dang, GitHub really is under siege Cursor is now building1...

jerodsanto.net

But yak shaving is fun

KO | EN This blog doesn’t use a static site generator or framework like Jekyll, Hugo, or Gatsby. I tried a few of them at first, but they gave me too little freedom to customize, so I decided to build...

parksb.github.io

Real artists still ship

The legendary adage Steve Jobs deployed to push the original Macintosh team over the finish line has outlived the hardware it helped ship. Had Apple’s software engineers been equipped with AI coding a...

jerodsanto.net

Agentic coding's hidden productivity boost

Why exactly do coding agents make us feel so much more productive as developers? I think Max Hodak hit the nail on the head at end of a recent Naval pod: The thing that really changed is—it used to b...

jerodsanto.net

Simple systems are the best systems

When it comes to systems design, John Gall knew his stuff. He even has a LAW1 about it: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex sys...

jerodsanto.net

Planting trees and dreaming of software

I guess I can’t help myself. ¯(ツ)/¯ When I retired from The Changelog two months back, the only real plan I had1 was to plant a little tree farm on our land.2 Check! ✅ It might not look like much,3 but that’s 250 evergreen seedlings, planted and mulched.4 Oh, and watered. Sooo much water. I was going to install a drip system immediately, but that’s an entirely different story. For now, it’s been all manual watering, baby… 🚿

jerodsanto.net

So long, and thanks for all the logs

After 13 years, 1042 podcasts, 452 newsletters, and countless friends made along the way… it’s time to say goodbye to The Changelog. I shipped my final News last Monday and Adam shipped our Friends finale yesterday. For reasons I cannot explain, during “big change” moments like this my brain shoots clichés at me like Nitro fired tennis balls at approaching American Gladiator contenders.1 “Parting is such sweet sorrow” “All good things must come to an end”

jerodsanto.net

Agentic anxiety

One fascinating part of our conversation1 with Steve Ruiz from tldraw started when he confessed that he feels bad going to bed without his Claudes working on something. I share the feeling. But why? We analyze it on the pod, but I wanted to jot down some thoughts here as well, if for no other reason but to get it out of my head. Just one more level… After talking with tldraw Steve, I read a different Steve’s confession post, AI Vampire, in which he points to one aspect of what’s going on: good ol’ fashion addiction

jerodsanto.net

7 phrases that need to die before I do

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to make people stop typing this drivel into textareas near me. Tell me you’re $X without telling me you’re $X1 You 👏 don’t 👏 have 👏 to 👏 clap 👏 between 👏 words2 I was today years old when…3 The. One. Where. Every. Word. Is. A. Sentence.4 I don’t know who needs to hear this…5 I’m not crying, you’re crying.6 Six Seven7 That’s all for now. I’m sure I’ll despise future phrases in the future. Before I go, here’s one more from the past: “automagically” is a dumb word (but makes for a pretty good song)

jerodsanto.net

The shovelware cometh

In September of last year, I covered a post by Mike Judge arguing that AI coding claims don’t add up, in which he asked this question: If so many developers are so extraordinarily productive using these tools, where is the flood of shovelware? We should be seeing apps of all shapes and sizes, video games, new websites, mobile apps, software-as-a-service apps — we should be drowning in choice. We should be in the middle of an indie software revolution. We should be seeing 10,000 Tetris clones on Steam.

jerodsanto.net

Thinking about custom software in a new way

At this point, anybody saying things about AI’s usefulness in software development like notch did on X the other day is either a) burying their head in the sand, b) an old man yelling at clouds, or c) seriously entrenched for some other reason. Here’s notch’s take, so you don’t have to bounce: Reminder that using AI to write code is an incredibly bad idea still, and anyone advocating for it is either incompetent or evil.

jerodsanto.net

Remember when people used to say *boss*, when they were describing something that was really cool?

One of my goals when I refreshed my blog was to publish with Hugo, but write with Obsidian. Turns out that was as simple as: ln -s ~/src/jerodsanto/net/content/posts ~/Dropbox/obsidian/Jerod/blog That’s a good start, but once I’m writing in Obsidian… I don’t exactly want to leave. There’s friction when managing various Hugo tasks from a separate terminal session. So, I had Claude Code write me an Obsidian plugin to add those features. It’s called Hugo Boss1 and I submitted it to the Obsidian community plugins list, so hopefully you’ll be able to install it from there soon2. The plugin adds a button that has four features today:

jerodsanto.net

youtube.com

Engineering management (for the rest of us) with Sarah Drasner, Director of Engineering at Google (Changelog Interviews #540)

This week Sarah Drasner joins us to talk about her book Engineering Management for the Rest of Us and her experience leading engineering at Zillow, Microsoft, Netlify, and now Google.

changelog.fm

How companies are sponsoring OSS with Alyssa Wright, Chad Whitacre & Duane O’Brien (Changelog Interviews #539)

This week we’re celebrating Maintainer Month along with our friends at GitHub. Open source runs the world, but who runs open source? Maintainers. Open source maintainers are behind the software we use everyday, but they don’t always have the community or support they need. That’s why we’re celebrating open source maint...

changelog.fm

Mojo might be huge, chatbots aren't it, big tech lacks an AI moat & monoliths are not dinosaurs (Changelog News #43)

Jeremy Howard thinks Mojo might be the biggest programming language advance in decades, Amelia Wattenberger is not impressed by AI chatbots, a leaked Google memo admits big tech has no AI moats & Werner Vogels reminds us that monoliths are not dinosaurs.

changelog.com

Livebook's big launch week featuring José Valim (Changelog Interviews #538)

José Valim joins Jerod to talk all about what’s new in Livebook – the Elixir-based interactive code notebook he’s been working on the last few years. José made a big bet when he decided to bring machine learning to Elixir. That bet is now paying off with amazing new capabilities such as building and deploying a Whisper...

changelog.fm