Mastodawn

cancel Jul 19, 2025

Over a year ago, I posited that AI coding stuff isn't about coding or productivity. It's about some % of people who feel a stimulus-reward thing from using it, similar to how some people feel when gambling. It feels so overwhelmingly good to some % of people they don't even bother to measure if their AI stuff is actually doing anything useful, because of course it must be, because the feeling is so strong.

It seems more & more people are also finding this idea lately.

But I've also realized that it seems to apply to any of the prompt-style AI things, not just coding. There is some kind of slot machine playing mania (sorta, not exactly) thing it triggers in some % of people. I'm certain of it now.

If anything, it makes me feel a bit less angry and more sad towards the people with this AI prompt-query compulsion. It feels closer to when you see someone with a gambling addiction stuck at a gambling machine.

Rob Styles Dec 17

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Luis Villa Dec 17

Couple of other thoughts:

-If I were moz’s leadership, I’d explicitly sponsor a year-long competition for “best Firefox fork”. Firefox started as a fork, and Moz should try to recapture that vibe.

-Then leave FFox as-is—that brand isn’t worth much to anyone under 40 anyway.

-TIL that people are *still releasing updates of the old Moz Suite aka Seamonkey*. Here in the Year 20-fucking-25. So long-lived forks that allow you to stay with what you like are very possible! hooray _libre_ software.

Rob Styles Dec 6

The 2026 FIFA World Cup has much in common with the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. Discuss.

Rob Styles Dec 4

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John Leach Dec 3

@robstyles but what's a sema for?

couldn't resist sorry.

Rob Styles Nov 29

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Fabio Manganiello Nov 29

@jasongorman same feedback I’ve got now that many engineers in my company started advocating for the “let the agent write the tests” approach - while still calling it TDD.

Most of them now write the code, and then ask the agent to write unit tests for it.

Which is exactly the opposite of what TDD should be.

In TDD your tests are the specs and the contract for your code, and then you write code that complies with that contract. In “agentic tests” mode instead tests are an afterthought slapped on top of existing code, and you keep brute-forcing your prompts until the tests match the code you’ve already written.

Rob Styles Nov 27

Picard Tips Nov 27

Picard management tip: At a high level, know how all the machines work.

Rob Styles Nov 24

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SwiftOnSecurity Nov 24

The reason IT Security is so hard is someone has to do it. That's the answer.

That is not a technical challenge it is an interpersonal one.

Do you know how many smart people there are trying their very best? You think it would be deluged in security.

But it's not. This is a personal problem and that's what ruins everyone that tries it.

Rob Styles Nov 19

Miguel Arroz Nov 19

Unpopular opinion, apparently: companies like cloudflare and Amazon provide very high quality services people and enterprises actually need, with a level of uptime and security vastly superior to what most of their customers would achieve on their own or using traditional providers. Their downtimes being so visible is a consequence of their success.

Rob Styles Nov 17

ya boi tim Jun 21, 2024

ME: Hello computer! Please show me what I was doing recently

COMPUTER IN THE 1980's: l cease to exist when I am powered off. Please start whatever you were doing from scratch

COMPUTER IN THE 2000's: Yep here you go champ

COMPUTER IN THE 2020's: I stored 10,000 identical copies of what you were doing in 500 different global datacentres at a carbon footprint equivalent to leaving a semi-trailer idling 24/7 and also sent a copy to the FBI just to be safe. Let me know which one you want and I'll do my best to figure it out. By the way here are 10 things which are similar to what you were doing and 9 of them are ads. Do you like this? Please select "I love this very much" or "I'll be in love with this later" to continue

Rob Styles Nov 13

Jason Gorman Nov 13

The most common things engineering leaders think will make dev teams go faster actually have the opposite effect.

https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-go-faster/

The Seven Deadly Sins of “Go Faster”

Things that will make your dev team take longer to deliver worse software:1. Adding more people to the team2. Making them work longer hours3. Cutting down on work that “slows them down”…

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