Many respondents have been regular porn viewers since the fourth grade; few were older than twelve when they picked up the habit.
This seems like an unsustainable equilibrium.
Iām trying to get better at building in public and at celebrating projects that end up as dead ends. Take this in that spirit.
What it was
Papagei Terminal allowed a user to spin up virtual machines like they were slack channels to make it easier to use >1 Claude Code instance at the same time and make it easier to use Claude in --dangerously-skip-permissions mode.
Here is an early prototype. Future versions were way better!
What went well
I think I had a really clear idea of who this was for and the need that it was serving.
This is by far the most ambitious technical project Iāve built. I was able to use it to make meaningful code changes across several projects. I learned a bunch about working with AWS and with agents.
I actually got to the point where a tool I built was able to make code changes to other projects. That was really motivating.
Why it didnāt work / why Iām shutting it down
At the beginning of the summer, there really wasnāt a product that allowed you to use more than one Claude Code at the same time without putting real effort into understanding Git Worktrees. Conductor was experimenting here, but it was all local.
Between May when I started working on this seriously and when I got it to the point where I was really starting to enjoy using it, everyone launched a version of this and I was no longer convinced that I had something unique to bring here.
What I learned / what I would do differently next time
Realistically I probably started building this too late. I also donāt think I am embedded enough in the community of software developers to get a following here.
I wasnāt active enough in recruiting early users.
A very happy š Halloween š¦ to you and yours.
Worth your time
The most American Building. My grandfather slept in it while it was unfinished in between training stops in World War 2. My father took classes in it. I went to it on field trips. Itās a wonderful building.
Preach, Nabeel, Preach. I wonder why āeducationā rather than āageā has been what has sorted our politics š¤.
On relationship between growth and trust, arguing that living through periods of higher GDP growth leads to higher societal trust. On one level, this squares well with the idea that trust is a mixture of competence, commitment, and character, with societies delivering growth being seen as competent. On the other hand, I would expect higher levels of trust to also unlock opportunities for faster growth.
For the first time in 35 years, no rap songs are in the top 40. Rolling Stone.
Musings
Should we care about process or outcomes? Some really successful people (see Tom Brady here ) seem more to favor the process over the result while others favor the result over the process (see Phil Knight / Nike and Sam Altman). How should I make sense of this?
What would have to change for Western Society to become less individualistic? Is it possible for Western Society to become more individualistic? What would it look like to short individualism?
I got to join Marc and Ben from the Supra podcast to talk about how AI is changing how software teams operate.
Three things I took away from this conversation.
First, is that there are some things that AI doesnāt change. At the end of the day, youāve still got to define the problem, define the approach, define the details. AI changes the tools, the artifacts, and the process, but it doesnāt change the basic facts of problem solving.
Second is AI is changing how software is made at three levels simultaneously: individuals, teams, and organizations. Individuals are trying out tools (e.g., Claude Code) and putting them into their workflow. Then there are some teams that are starting to adopt some of these tools en masse and reorganize their processes around them. Finally, there are organizations that are trying to figure out what all of this means for the āstandardā way of working and shipping software.
Tools - What are the tools that are available to us? What are their benefits and limitations?
Tactics - How do we coordinate with these tools to achieve a result? What are the artifacts that are created? What is the size and roles of people on the team?
Training - How do we build competence on these new tools and tactics? How do we give people space, opportunity, and resources to experiment?
Values - What does great work look like? What is important and celebrated?
Without all of these working together, organizations will fail to get value out of a transformative technology ā and I have to be honest, now is a moment where Iād rather be at a small company experimenting with new ways of working than at a large company where I have to be concerned about how this works at scale.
Similar to Shoe Dog ā and different in the way that Nike is different from Trader Joeās.
Three things I want to take away from this book:
Joe was incredibly structured in how he thought about problems. He wanted to have a retail store where he paid people well which required him to have goods that had a high price per amount of space they took up. He was willing to cycle through lots of weird ideas (including things like gun ammo) as long as they met this criteria.
Discontinuities. Trader Joeās would specifically target little edges in product categories. As an example, they would become experts in the regulations for say cheese or butter to build limited edition products. In particular they did this on the product side, carefully understanding product categories, and on the regulatory side, carefully reading the fine print to find edges that others didnāt have. An example of a discontinuity is being willing to sell coffee in non standard container sizes or for a limited period of time.
The concept of double entry retailing, which is another way of saying that decisions are interconnected. As an example, paying people more reduces shrinkage.
I didnāt know whether or not to laugh or cry when he said that Trader Joeās target customer is overeducated and underpaid.
This book helped me better understand how retail, goods, and media are interconnected. The transition from network tv to cable tv happens at the same time as Trader Joeās is shifting away from homogenized consumer packaged goods to the more varied assortment we see today. A similar version of this happened with Facebook and the DTC brands of the 2010s.