Thorsten Ball

When Gemini 3 came out I said it's the greatest model of all time. I loved it. But it didn't work for others. This week I'm seriously trying GPT-5.2 and already said it might be better than G3. Today, GPT-5.2 let me down and I wonder... am I... the boy who cried GOAT?

Is it safe to mention AI here now or will people call me a dumbass? No snark, genuine question. Main thing on my mind right now is how programming is changing and I love to talk about it. But I don't have the energy to fight over it.

yo yo yo

Arriving with the sound of two thousand angry tambourines, here it is: New issue of Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Oh my god, Marty, would you look at that! What is it, Barbara? Are you okay? Marty, it's... it's... two made-up names and... a new issue of Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Look, look, look! It's back! The two week break is over. A new Joy & Curiosity. Read it here (if you're not subscribed — wow): registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Extending the summer break: no newsletter this weekend.

CARO: Robert Moses, who replaced corruption in New York City, was worse than corruption for the democratic processes. In the postwar era many forces were coming together to destroy those processes in New York. But he was the most import— THORSTEN, CARO'S FRIEND: fuck him up bob

Amp now supports subagents. They're very powerful and I wonder whether they will change a lot of things. So I wrote about them: ampcode.com/agents-for-t...

Drums being drummed on, rattles, cymbals— A group of people shouting hey, hey, hey— Something's falling out of the sky, thrown out of a plane, what is it? The group of people is pointing towards it. "Hey, it's a new Register Spill!" registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Municipal office in my town let me know that my new personal ID is ready. The Reply-To here translates to: "Please use email from attachment" Welcome to small-town Germany

Yesterday I told my wife "you have to watch this" and showed her the Dyson keynote with the PencilVac and the FluffyCones and said stuff like "look! double lasers!" and "haha, no, wait, the best is yet to come" Today I'm wondering whether she looks at me the same.

Wait, what is tha— Someone slipped something under the door. It's... Look, it's a new Register Spill! (Special Saturday Morning Delivery with Special Jujutsu Intro) registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Okay, okay, `jj split` — that's nice.

Small personal update: Heard the idiom “all hat, no cattle” for the first time today and, starting now, I’m going to try to use it as much as possible.

AGI my ass

Here we go, week of jj.

Someone on LinkedIn took my post on How to Build an Agent, shortened it, removed all the code, simplified, and posted it there, on LinkedIn. If you were to tell me that it's all AI generated — the post itself, the comments, the job titles of the commentators — I'd believe you.

The pleasant hum of a harddrive, the soothing whirring of a dust-covered fan. Suddenly: the sound of the floppy drive ejecting something. A whirr, a click — a snap! That's... that's not a floppy disk? No! It's a new Register Spill! Read it here: registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Sometimes a great outcome of a day of programming is knowing what *not* to do now. (At least that's what I'm telling myself right now.)

Do I know a sound designer on here who can create sounds for software?

Your rating?

"where are you going to put the ads?" "i don't think you understand what i'm going for"

I have this feeling that all the big labs are RLing the models to get better at zero-shotting complete apps and I'm really wondering whether that's the right solution. I personally like working in tandem with an assistant — it goes for a bit, I check, I ask for changes, etc

No newsletter this week, I'm completely off this weekend

Wrote down how Amp — the agentic coding tool we've been working on for the last months — has changed programming for me. Read it here: ampcode.com/how-i-use-amp Yes, I barely type code by hand anymore.

My most common prompt critique is “this doesn’t make sense.” Sometimes people write instructions that are impossible to follow and then report that the model can’t do a task. Not really news to anyone, but liberal arts (writing, philosophy, logic, critique) training is good for this kind of thing.

Whenever someone with barefoot shoes walks into the gym I know that in 5min I will see some amazing yet weird feats of strength.

Gave a talk, got this hat. (Not pictured: questions about this hat I will get from all the non-tech people that live around me.)

So, there really isn't a calendar application yet into which I can drop a screenshot and it turns it into a calendar entry? Seems trivial to build nowadays, no?

Crash, boom, pang, meep meep — wait, what's that? It's... pretzels filled with peanut butte— No! It's a new Joy & Curiosity after all. registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

dude what

So I guess it's international law that whenever you build a hotel you have to invite The Guy and tell him: "we love your work, we've seen what you've done in the other hotels, please master, design us a new set of shower controls that the world hasn't seen before"

Wrote down how I changed my view on AI. Read it here: registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/theres-bea...

Meep meep, watch out, wait, no, step aside— oops, sorry about that! Well, here it is: a new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

nature vs. nurture but training vs. system-prompt

I'll be in SF next week. Arriving Sunday, leaving Friday. It's going to be a busy, busy week, but hey, if someone wants to have a coffee, let me know!

In case you're stuck writing something and can't get it out the door: Know that most things should be half as long.

Another entry for the They're Just Like Us log: Agent in Amp started removing now-obsolete properties, gets tired after 3 lines, decides to use ripgrep to do the rest of the replacements.

Fastmail should be studied for how they evolved their UI over the years. It's all very considered and tasteful, in my opinion. Sticks out by how much it doesn't stick out and doesn't go with trends.

The noise of someone kicking in a door. A chair falling over. Feet shuffling on the floor. Then, silence. But suddenly: a joyous scream. There it is, there it is. A new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...

Another fun magic trick! Differential Coverage for Debugging research.swtch.com/diffcover

Morning!

My notes from reading @thorstenball.com's article on building ai agents. codehakase.com/blog/2025-04...

If you're a tax accountant in Germany and know what the following words mean Carta, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy, Contractor, ISO, NSO, stock option, exercise window, Deel, Remote, Merchant of Record, Delaware company you can make a lot of money. Sadly, I don't think you exist.

Tastes like software

me, having written: writing is beautiful, writing *is* thinking, the noblest pursuit me, trying to write: writing fucking sucks, whoever invented the written word is a dumbass, it's all garbage anyway. talking, now that's something

With every emoji you put into an announcement message, the information I retain goes down by 10%.

Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Is it maybe a small bird? Or a beetle? Maybe it's a beetle? Or a mosquito? Man, I hope it's not a mos— No! It's a new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...