Jonathan Markwell

Pac-Man spotted over Newhaven Lighthouse.

I pre-ordered this. It is likely the most useful book for SaaS published this year. bsky.app/profile/asma...

Sleeping with Darwin and a bunch of fossils tonight.

20 years ago today I incorporated the company that became The Skiff Ltd. Looking forward to sharing some of the things members shared with me when we celebrated on Friday.

Today is 20 years since I created my Twitter account.

Avo 4 is here 🎉 15 months, ~2000 commits, and about 50 teams kicking the tires. It's a full redesign, not a fresh coat of paint. A safer way build your internal tools 🧵

Did you know that tickets go live for @ffconf.org next Thursday? 10am UK time. You going for the early bird tickets, or going to wait it out?

24 hours until the first Stripe Brighton meetup. Room for a few more people if you want to join… …and still time for me to include your dietary preferences in the meal order :) luma.com/0zakatid

Just published: "The 2026 problem". Check it out and subscribe to get everything I'm making. brightondynamic.com/posts/the-20...

Very happy for Bulgaria’s Eurovision win. Hopefully it’ll be within a week of @balkanruby.bsky.social and I can come to Sofia for a couple of weeks with the family. Bangaranga!

Already have people signed up who came to DevNest, OpenCoffeeSussex, SussexFounders and LTV Conf :) Hope you can join us too: luma.com/0zakatid

My next newsletter "The only billion-dollar company I'm comfortable depending on" is coming today. Subscribe to get it and stay in the loop on everything I'm creating. brightondynamic.com

The Skiff is becoming The Imposter Club In the first 4 weekends of May The Skiff is being transformed into The Imposter Club, venue 20 in the central trail of Brighton Artist Open Houses. A celebration of The Skiff’s community and its creative side! Details: brightondynamic.com/posts/the-sk...

Yesterday, the International Space Station made contact with Artemis II, marking the first time in history that two spacecraft on separate missions communicated directly with one another. A first not just for space travel, but for humanity. Incredible. www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-a...

Warning to open source maintainers: the Axios supply chain attack started with some very sophisticated social engineering targeted at one of their developers simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/3/s...

Today’s rainy dog walk was one of the best I’ve had for a while thanks to the return of this: softwaresocial.dev/episodes/wer... Thank you @mjwhansen.com and @leenyburger.bsky.social!

a few days ago i watched this video on the xz->openssl exploit and everybody with commit access should be forced to watch it, eyes held open by clamps if necessary

BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen, speaking to the FT, on impartiality www.ft.com/content/b139...

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Been putting off moving off asdf to mise for managing Ruby versions for months. I shouldn't have. It took two minutes to migrate and it Just Works™.

Wondering if this is more or less likely to be true now. Might depend on definition of a SaaS.

Just found the video floating around, but didn't see it posted here yet. Here's hoping there'll be a next time :-). @friendlyrb.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUjV...

New post > When ideas can be brought to life at this pace it ushers in a new way of working... The innovation is and always has been the ideas... now can we can implement these ideas so effortlessly and cheaply, the code essentially becomes a disposable commodity mileswoodroffe.com/articles/cla...

A thread for the holdouts @craigkerstiens.com

Since meeting @jot.is at @friendlyrb.com last year, we've been working on cogrid.com, a competitor research and tracking tool for SaaS founders and marketers. We're launching the MVP in a few weeks. Join our mailing list to follow our progress and get early access!

Just booked my ticket and accommodation, probably shouldn't have put it off until now - not many rooms left: bsky.app/profile/jot....

It’s Alex’s first day. You want to help them make a big impact fast. You let them use your computer, email address & app logins. They’re so quick you can’t even see all the steps they’re taking. What could possibly go wrong? Why can’t we onboard LLMs the way we would really onboard an employee?

Hey Ruby consultants, freelancers, and agencies! Quick reminder: we have the Ruby Consultants Quarterly Gathering (over Zoom) on Monday, 1pm ET! Come talk shop with other Rubyists. (It's not widely publicized, so if you don't have an invite, DM me and I'll add you.)

Great short post from @mheap.dev: michaelheap.com/visibility-i... It takes practice to deliver the right level of abstraction--too many details are not great. But surprises are so so bad. Even if Alice delivers a month later than Bob, people understand why and are more likely to accept it.

Someone just spotted I'm "featured quite heavily" in the video here: businessofsoftware.org/events/bos-e... (10 days left before prices go up)

If you haven't seen MKBHD's microchips for scale explainer, you are missing out holy moly this was like Beakman's World of the current era. so good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh9p...

Did you know that I do sound branding for a fee? 👇🏻 soundlogo.co

Alongside the Ruby 4.0 release last week, I published charm-ruby over Christmas, bringing @charm.land's excellent terminal UI libraries to Ruby. A full TUI framework, reusable components, styled output, forms, markdown rendering, spinners, charts, and a lot more! Demos below ⬇️

Here's a Christmas present for the Hotwire community! 🎅 I've compiled the entire (free) Hotwire Club knowledge base into a searchable MCP database. 📚 Here's the Github repository complete with install and configuration instructions: github.com/TheHotwireCl...

We were very proud to present @marcoroth.dev with the Rails Luminary Award 2025. And yes, I was on a secret mission to Zurich 😀. rubyonrails.org/2025/12/17/m...

New blog post: The Web Runs On Tolerance https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/12/the-web-runs-on-tolerance/ If you've ever tried to write a computer program, you'll know the dread of a syntax error. An errant space and your code won't compile. Miss a semi-colon and the world collapses. Don't close …

Wow. Simply wow.

At the risk of starting the flame war to end all flame wars... Modern LLMs (GPT-5.1, Claude 4.5, Gemini 3) produce excellent code and can be a significant productivity boost to software engineers who take the time to learn how to effectively apply them - especially if used with coding agent tools

Yesterday all of my sites were down. I could have brought them back up by changing one flag in a dashboard, but the dashboard was also down. So I just made sure I'm better prepared if this happens again. Little guide if you want to do the same: www.coryzue.com/writing/clou...

There are two kinds of people in the world - smart people who know they’re lucky, and lucky people who think they’re smart.

Good riddance!

SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten. "I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA