Wrapping up lil’ document editor “research”, starting to write more on it. In short: cross-platform in the Apple ecosystem is possible, but tricky once you get into third-party libraries. Agent coding makes a lot possible, bu... https://therealadam.com/2026/03/07/wrapping-up-lil-document-editor.html

Behind every guitar god there is, literally, a drummer making the odd 7/8 or 5/4 bar sound like 4/4. Paraphrasing Einstein, true guitar gods don’t play at dice or outside of a strict 4/4. (Inspired by: what the heck even is “Black Dog”?)

Squeeze out the trickiest part of the problem, another part of the problem becomes the trickiest. A tale as old as time. "Today, it seems like the biggest opportunities will be in the third of my opening statements. Building ... https://therealadam.com/2026/03/01/squeeze-out-the-trickiest-part.html

Blogging (Classic): https://therealadam.com/2026/02/24/blogging-classic.html Wherein you need feeds, notes, and documents.

I love when/what Matt Webb builds: "It should be SO EASY to share + collaborate on Markdown text files. The AI world runs on .md files. Yet frictionless Google Docs-style collab is so hard… UNTIL NOW, and how about that for a teas... https://therealadam.com/2026/02/16/i-love-whenwhat-matt-webb.html

dedicated pneumatic tubes for girl scout cookies could fix me. IT COULD FIX AMERICA

Contra my optimism on software estimates, some realism: "I gather as much political context as possible before I even look at the code. How much pressure is on this project? Is it a casual ask, or do we have to find a way to ... https://therealadam.com/2026/02/10/contra-my-optimism-on-software.html

"Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to change, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books" You can’t argue with a star!

I went to see an elephant about a birthday.

Finished in January but forgot to add it. Everything I’ve read by Becky Chambers is fun SF that makes you feel optimistic for the future of humanity. "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" is no exception—great story, rich world building, likable characters, tackling issues of politics & gender.

Dave Rupert, Write about the future you want: "There’s a lot that’s not going well; politics, tech bubbles, the economy, and so on. I spend most of my day reading angry tweets and blog posts. There’s a lot to be upset about, so ... https://therealadam.com/2026/02/04/dave-rupert-write-about-the.html

This is not my beautiful agent-driven economy: https://therealadam.com/2026/02/02/this-is-not-my-beautiful.html Wherein someone’s gonna be wrong about AI

I’ve been reading Power Broker on and off throughout the year (brag). I’m almost five hundred pages in (brag again) and it’s worth it. The writing is as good as the research is deep. Which is to say, it manages to maintain a gr... https://therealadam.com/2026/01/29/ive-been-reading-power-broker.html

Simon Willison: "If you have significant previous coding experience - even if it’s a few years stale - you can drive these things really effectively. Especially if you have management experience, quite a lot of which transfers to... https://therealadam.com/2026/01/27/simon-willison-if-you-have.html

Wherein we're not here to push Trello cards around https://therealadam.com/2026/01/17/processes-should-serve-outcomes-not.html

Processes should serve outcomes, not the other way ‘round: https://therealadam.com/2026/01/17/processes-should-serve-outcomes-not.html

Wherein there are cars, light-sabers, and television in my life. https://therealadam.com/2026/01/15/i-was-back-at-destiny.html

It’s the end-game of typing code as we know it: https://therealadam.com/2026/01/04/its-the-endgame-of-typing.html Wherein it continues to be about the other things

Joining a new crew amidst a sea change: https://therealadam.com/2026/01/02/joining-a-new-crew-amidst.html Wherein types, agents, and quality-of-life matter a lot for software development these days.

The hand we dealt: https://therealadam.com/2025/12/26/the-hand-we-dealt.html Wherein generational life-scripts have downstream consequences.

Three great clarinet-adjacent sentences: https://therealadam.com/2025/12/20/three-great-clarinetadjacent-sentences.html

Coding for the sake of typing in code: https://therealadam.com/2025/12/17/coding-for-the-sake-of.html Expert typist’s elegy

When Bernard Purdie played a session, he'd sometimes put up a sign that said "You Done Hired the Hitmaker." He was that good. youtu.be/J8DsNo4KB6Y?...

> If everything is slow-moving around you, it is likely not going to be good. To fully make use of your brain, you need to move as close as possible to the speed of your thought. lemire.me/blog/2025/1...

Write some pseudocode. Then tell the agent to turn it into a working implementation. That's a whole wisdom. 🤷 Don't overthink it!

Delivering software reduces the demand for estimates. The faster you can deliver software, the less you will need estimates. Estimating software as a list of tasks scored by effort and variance conveys the most important information required for good-faith use of estimates.

Language models can’t slop their way out of social, human problems, like estimating software projects: therealadam.com/2025/05/01/...

It’s really hard to know how you did in a job interview. The bad ones stand out, but the meh and good ones are harder to sniff out.

For the most parts, we’ve unscientifically made up our deadlines. They’re forcing functions, not hard constraints. Most deadlines aren’t scientific. They’re arbitrary dates chosen for plausibility, not intended accuracy. therealadam.com/2025/04/17/...

Owl visitor: https://therealadam.com/2025/12/03/owl-visitor.html

I did a talk compiling what I’ve learned about, and with, coding agents over the past several months. I think everyone on product teams, not just developers, can benefit from their use. You should read to find out why! therealadam.com/2025/11/25/...

Culture colliding with excitement often sounds like “that could never possibly work”. therealadam.com/2025/11/18/...

If you have dozens of open browser tabs, I am judging you. therealadam.com/2025/11/07/...

In Markdown buffers, I’m the boss therealadam.com/2025/11/04/...

Let the amateurs cook therealadam.com/2025/11/03/...

Seems like the unifying thread of our dumb times is that everyone is losing the thread. therealadam.com/2025/10/25/...

If you started programming in the 1990s, I am happy to inform you that domain names like “int-main-int-argc-char-star-argv.net” are still very much in vogue for your programming blog. therealadam.com/2025/10/25/...

If you’ve been playing along at home, great news: I started a new job last week and it’s going well! 🎊😮‍💨

The most useful thing I’ve read on interviewing in a while: hellointerview.substack.com/p/what-happ... It helps to have run a lot of interviews as a hiring manager. Or, to have been part of a lot of interview loops as a technical or panel interviewer.

Once again, the cars were good therealadam.com/2025/10/22/...

Maybe we should build more personal software _in the text_, instead of in scripts and toolbar buttons. 🤔 therealadam.com/2025/10/19/...

The King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Rule: If you provide a text box for people to put things on the internet, you will eventually need some kind of moderation mechanism for people to opt out of the King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard discourse without bothering the admins.

De/compress: it’s a pretty good tool for iterative thinking on what software and code _wants_ to be. therealadam.com/2025/10/14/...

New post: Someone built it; someone has to build it.

Many folks seem really excited about autumn’s arrival. therealadam.com/2025/10/15/...

Does every writer imagine themself as their hero at the typewriter? Or, scribbling (a masterpiece, of course) on a napkin. No, just me, imagining Caro or Vonnegut? Weird.🤣

Expired: glancing at server log files to see what’s going on. Tired: glancing at Slack messages to see what’s going on. Wired: glancing at agent activity to see what it’s building. Inspired: glancing at application logs to see what the agent is _really_ building.

In a buyer’s market, for houses, cars, or employees, credentials and checkmarks create a hell of a blindspot.

The din of roads and highways, whether nearby or distant, is the sound of the American city.

A blog post can just…end.