I’m not sure what is says about me that I’m trying to find textbooks and nonfiction from my childhood using Gemini.

One of my very first events at Google was hosting some local Girl Scouts who came to check out our office and show us robots they had made. This article talks about some of the other work Google is doing to help children have a healthy relationship with tech. blog.google/outreach-ini...

Do we have a term for the AI equivalent of SEO yet?

The Duolingo is working. Slowly. Caught myself talking to my cat in French today. It wasn’t complex, but it happened. Tu as les oreilles grises avec un peu d’orange. Tu as des rayures grises sur les jambes. Tu es très mignonne! Tu veux le petit déjeuner!

What if I told you that development has spec-driven for decades? No really, I was writing specs as an intern back in like 2002 that developers used to create features in products.

One of my partners work friends came over last night and complimented me on my content because she didn’t know I could do that stuff. It’s kind of weird that I have a whole group of tech friends that have never heard me speak, never read my blog, and don’t know I make videos.

Also, since I'm apparently in a somewhat random mood this morning...this is still probably the best tech book in existence: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers www.goodreads.com/book/show/44... Remember: Legacy Code is just code you wrote last week :-)

The longer I'm in tech the more I believe that the most valuable thing you can bring to work every day is genuine curiosity. Why did someone make that architectural decision? What is the person from another team working on? How would your peers approach this problem you are struggling with?

And somedays my job involves pricing out 3D pancake printers and custom latte art machines. Cheaper than I expected. Why do I stay in DevRel? I have a novelty drive. There is no typical day in DevRel. Hence. Pancake Bots. Also I genuinely like people.

I've probably shared this before but its worth sharing again. u There was a re-org early in my management career. I was frustrated with how folks were reacting. Not my finest moment. A mentor pulled me aside and told me that I had to make time for people's feelings. Make Time For Feelings.

New favorite addition to prompts. "You are my extremely terse assistant."

A while back a mentor told me when I was working with another team... "They think they did 80% and we did 20%. We think we did 80% and they did 20%. The truth is in the middle." Why? Because there are large parts of our jobs that are "invisible" to others. They don't see all of your 80%.

Tonight’s Duolingo French lesson made me wonder if “whale” in French included Toothed Whales as we call them. It appears not. Also I learned that Orcas have two names in French: orque and épaulard.

Why don’t I leave Seattle? No reason. Definitely not this….

Hey Devs, Stop blaming yourself when things are hard to setup. Dev tools can and should have good UX and be easy to setup and work with. You aren't a bad dev because you end up banging your head against a library for tool for 3 hours. In almost all cases, the tool could be better.

*knocks on wood* I think I just did a major OS version update on my personal laptop and none of my dev tools broke? Maybe? At least the stack I use for my blog is working. I should really make a Firebase Studio workspace for that.

My ability to break things in weird ways that no one else can continues. I'm the opposite of "works on my machine".

Today's very software moment when you are at a summit, and the guest speaker wrote one of your college textbooks.

Auntie Aja presentation tip: Use a color vision deficiency simulator tool on your slides before presenting. I have both family members and dear friends who have forms of color vision deficiency. Over the years I've become pretty ok at choosing colors that work, but I still check.

A friend introduced me to the Eurovision Song Contest today. I knew of the existence of Eurovision but I didn’t fully appreciate this experience. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ would brunch again.

I was reflecting this weekend about how many of my DevRel skills I learned in Girl Scouts. Working a booth ✅ Staffing a booth at a tech conference is a piece of cake compared to selling cookies at a downtown Seattle bus stop at rush hour.

We've been busy improving Firebase Studio based on community feedback. Improved UI generation, improved experience building on mobile, and support for Gemini 2.5 in the app prototyping agent. firebase.blog/posts/2025/0...

Just once I'd like a website or app to notice when I change my billing address and ask if I'd like to change my default shipping address as well. Just once.

Measure impact in DevRel is hard and we often use the same, easier to get metrics. Instead of starting with the numbers I have I like to start with questions: How will I know if this project is a success? If ______ happens I'll want to spend more time and money on this project.

Showing your work in middle school math class isn't training you for Calculus and beyond. Its training you to write documentation of your work as an adult. Manager me: "If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen" IC me: ✨ Vibes ✨ Old habits are hard to break.

In ~20 minutes the app dev spotlight at #GoogleCloudNext starts. It is jam packed with non-stop nerd/geek demos. So much code. If you are at Next come up to the Spotlight room (Mandalay G) and watch. I'll be backstage crossing fingers to hopefully keep demo gremlins away.

I can finally talk about what I've been working on since August. Introducing Firebase Studio! firebase.studio, now in preview. Firebase Studio is an environment for creating applications. It supports both AI first app development and traditional code first app development.

Lovingly handcrafted like our video series. By the way. Season 2 is about agents. I hear those are popular right now. youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Do I need 100 dinosaur enamel pins? No. Are 100 dinosaur pins being delivered to my house today? Maaaaaybe.

Quote of the Day: "I'm not rolling my own auth with vibe coding." I spend a lot of time collaborating with the AI while I code, but I need to remain in the driver seat.

May UX designers who build applications that only work on 21" monitors step on legos in the dark. I pretty much only plugin in a secondary monitor if I'm doing screencasts and need my script on one screen and screen capture on the other. Also, I like smaller phones.

I really wish genAI was a thing when I was doing test and test automation. So good for generating realistic test data.

It’s gonna be an absolutely stonking F1 season. A Williams and an RB ahead of the Ferraris?!?

Once a tester always a tester I guess? No really. I break computers without trying. It’s just ingrained habit to be chaotic. Waiting for a page to load before clicking the button? Eh. Text to right top to bottom. Try again. Full screen? Try half a 14” laptop screen.

🚨 TypeScript just got 10× faster! The TypeScript compiler has been ported to Go and we had Anders Hejlsberg and Daniel Rosenwasser on to announce it and break it all down! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlGz...

Caturday with 16 pounds of lap cat. Little does she know we’re looking for a friend for her.

Mr Thagomizer: What do you want to listen to? Me: Broadway. Cooking and show tunes. They bring me joy.

It’s weird where I just reflexively reach for AI these days. I’ve been making a list of plants for the garden. Had Gemini OCR the image, sort by sun/shade/part-shade, then annotate for what’s perennial or annual in my region and scan for invasives. Exported to a doc to share with Mr Thagomizer.

I took an AI class in college. I was so excited. I wanted to learn about genetic algorithms (that dates me a bit). About half way through the class I realized...this is just coding. I expected rainbows or unicorns or something a bit magic. Instead, I got state machines and Lisp.

Hard agree. Machine learning isn't just LLMs and GenAI. You are using ML every single day in everyday tools. The introduction of ML is not equivalent to exploitation, massive energy use, or whatever valid criticism you have of GenAI.

My first experiences with LLMs years ago was me asking the following questions: Which is bigger three elephants or five male tigers? How many even prime numbers are there? Can you write me a ballad about riding unicorns? Can you explain why P = NP?

This week in Aja breaks computers: Somehow managed to get two folks on a round trip reservation WITH SEATS RESERVED but one person was only ticketed for the return.

It feels like all of my medium daily digests are a pretty algorithmic mix of articles about the following: - AI is ruining the world and sucks and no one should use it - AI is amazing install these AI apps today - Here's how to learn all of <complex AI topic> in 30 minutes

AI agent I want: I text it “I’m sick today” it enters my sick time, cancels meetings (and reschedules?), and lets my team know. If it could order pho and Gatorade I’d be super happy.

Your semi regular reminder from Auntie Aja that you don't have to use an LLM for everything if you use an LLM for one thing. If that case statement is working for you, keep using it. If your old school classification model is cheap and fast and works, you can keep using it.

I've been thinking a lot about this blog post I wrote years and years ago recently. thagomizer.com/blog/2017/06... One of the most important skills I've learned is to be proud of my work, but willing to take criticism without it impacting my sense of self worth.

Okay Seattle. My local baked goods and tea joint shut down. Where in the CD can I buy a drink and a nibble and hunker down to write for a couple hours? For whatever reason I do my best writing away from my normal work environments.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came in a 10 minute 1:1 with a Google VP. Execs want to be helpful. Make it VERY clear how they can help you. The VERY clear part is the hard part. They usually don't want ALL the background upfront, they want to know what you need.

Not sure if @alaskaairlines.bsky.social actually reads this but…signage issue in Seattle. These two signs were probably 20 feet apart. Which is it?

There is a point where every additional word you add to a design doc or strategic plan exponentially increases the likelihood of disagreement. Wisdom is knowing that point. I feel like parents of teenagers probably know that point well.