Michael McCliment

Really feeling this advice from Norvig today: "Whenever you develop a complex data structure, develop a corresponding consistency checker."

You might not be a professional with a design title - but when you're forced to think about the thing you're making, you're at least doing what designers do. AI didn't "democratize" design. It took away the very thing that could make everyone designers, because it made that thinking optional.

151 - Small Meeting Rooms * The larger meetings are, the less people get out of them. But institutions often put their money and attention into large meeting rooms and lecture halls.

If you cannot read our documentation: If your vibecode LLM cannot read our documentation: If you cannot operate with the available documentation like every other site/app has done for the last decade: You. Should. Not. Be. Making. An. App.

There's a guy in my replies who says he doens't read women because they write well about emotional conflicts and unrequited love and that's not what he wants. He reads sci fi he says. Can you imagine reading sci-fi and not reading Octavia Butler? Or Ursula K Le Guin? Or NK Jemisin?

Management blocking safeguards has been a Software Engineering issue since Software Enginerring has been a thing. (Margaret Hamilton was a foundational figure of SWE.)

you don’t hold "AI" accountable; you hold AI developers, vendors, and corporations that profit off it accountable holding "AI accountable" is like holding a toaster accountable. it's an inanimate object. it doesn't have wishes, feelings, or desires

“While OpenAI admits to agents behaving ‘unpredictably’, they must also acknowledge their responsibility to monitor and prevent these risks,” Wikimedia said. “AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems and protect the public from the harm they cause.” arstechnica.com/security/202...

“The most familiar example of integrating as the social process is when two or three people meet to decide on some course of action, and separate with a purpose, a will, which was not possessed by anyone when he came to the meeting but is the result of the interweaving of all.” Mary P. Follett, 1924

"Anthropic leaders to control AI lab via 'Founder LLC' to promote the common good" www.reuters.com/legal/transa.... If only Elinor Ostrom was still around to explain to these AI doomer numpties that 'common good' is something we decide _in common_, not via a cabal.

I hope we keep writing docs for people who want to understand and build things without using AI.

First time in Germany! Unfortunately not getting out of the airport, though.

Second trip to Malmo for the year. I learned today that YYZ has an infield concourse, you have to take a shuttle bus to get to the real gate.

When I was writing about the four day work week I went into a deep dive on the research and psychology behind optimal work and everything I learned completely changed my life. Resting is literally the most efficient way to get good work done, and it's not even close.

the next generation of game developers don’t need a special grant for 20 geniuses to get some walking around money they need entry level jobs that a) exist and b) keep existing next quarter

update 2: this point has come up a few times and i think it's worth reiterating here code review, albeit adopted as a cheap way to find bugs, is more about knowledge transfer in practice. doing the review at the end of the work was just the easiest way to introduce it into a process

I finished reading Argyris and Schon’s Organizational Learning II during this week’s work trip, so I (finally) got to start on Cat Hicks’ book on the flight home!

Anyway, remember that things are inevitable right up til the moment they’re not. “Inevitable” describes potential, not reality. It is a nightmare of the future coming to bully those who are asleep—not a description of some kind of logical or pragmatic reality, as some would have us believe.

Words are empty, unstable signifiers that have clouds of meaning and connotation. People don’t like to think that we put parts of ourselves into those meanings too, but we do.

Chess is a formal system. Language isn't. There's a huge difference between the rules of chess and language, which doesn't have a set of rules in the same way.

exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!

There’s a big difference between the promise of GenAI and the reality. The promise is the democratization of expertise. Anyone can be a coder, analyst or lawyer with AI. The reality is actually the erosion of expertise. Being an expert is no longer valued yet experts are needed to vet AI lies.

Starting a three-week vacation. I'm pretty sure this is the longest proper break I've taken in over 25 years.

This describes Toronto today.

This is one of the things I «discovered»* about programming, that you can have an «accent» from your more proficient languages in your less proficient languages. Getting Good at a programming language is much more than learning the syntax, it’s cultural * ie was never taught and hadn’t read about.

The conclusion I pull from this isn't that AI is great at its job, it's that the bureaucracy and politics of corporate environments are so terrible that folks will try to find any possible way out of it. Because AI can mean no more recalcitrant bob engineers that you have to deal with. No politics.

remember when a bunch of software companies made a big deal about "returning to the office," citing worsening quality of work? and then none of their products got any better? and then some of them started to vibe code everything? and their products got even worse??

This is a lost art. First place I worked had 4 teams working on different games, and a dedicated pitch team just laying track in the form of new projects. Used to be doable at 200 people. Indies being so small and AAA going all in on big projects has largely nuked it. It’s a shame.

Typing speed was never our limiting factor. We are distancing us even more from our users, from the collaborative process of creating what is needed.

Doing this can be more than a bit terrifying because it requires you to have some collective intellectual humility; in other words, a culture of admitting out loud and in public that you don’t know everything, and that you need other people’s help.

I understand and sympathise with the lack of funding to study the impact of ai on kids/vulnerable groups. regardless, if you're partnering with/sponsored by the ai company whose technology you're studying, the conflict of interest is too great to take your findings seriously

Managed to read a chapter of nonfiction during my commute today. First time this year, which is a decent sign that I’m getting to a healthier point with work/life. When my personal load-shedding behavior involves not reading, it’s a good indicator that I’m teetering too close to burnout.

I’ve decided that my anxiety is just my brain consistently doing premortems

In Malmo for the week, beautiful weather and getting to meet colleagues in person for the first time at the Massive studio. 😊

About to get on my first flight since 2019, and it’s also going to be the longest one I’ve ever taken. First time heading to Europe. 😃

New Reading for during the commute to work this morning. 😃

This is for real also I'm hiring SRE-shaped people if you are hands-on SRE not "thinks SRE is mostly about telling people what to do"

Getting out to play!

I know I’m a libtard but I think it’s bad the U.S. president keeps calling for the killing of specific sitting elected officials who didn’t even commit crimes

AI PRs where the author doesn't have an understanding of the system shift the burden of understanding onto the reviewer. So now it's on the reviewer to gain an understanding of this area to either confirm or refute. The author saved time at the expense of the reviewer.