Posts

I posted to reddit, asking if other programmers learned the craft via copy work: Did you copy/transcribe code from books when learning to program? Lots of self-selecting confirmation bias + survivorship bias. E.g. those that survived (and are on reddit and comment on questions) used this method, those that didn’t, didn’t. I guess I really want to hear stories of people that don’t learn this way. The copy-and-pasters (code copypastas? the horror!). What is “copywork with code” called? Anyway, this got me thinking, “what’s this called?” ...

I was commenting on reddit how I used to type in BASIC programs back when learning the craft. I then recalled that I had an old “laptop” that only did BASIC. After some searching, I found it: It was an Epson HX-20, pictured below (photo from wiki): Oh man, it was cool. More from wiki’s history of laptops: The first significant development towards laptop computing was announced in 1981 and sold from July 1982, the 8/16-bit Epson HX-20. ...

I’m still thinking about copywork. The previous experiment (Lovecraft Copywork) was no good. In fact, it sucks, and not just because the UI is rough. Using it now feels more like a typing exercise, not like copywork. For this case to work, I think a better approach would to to create beautiful letter/a4-sized pages of text with large font that can be printed and used as a reference for the writer to hand-copy, away from the workstation. ...

I finished a book on birth-order yesterday: Why First Borns Rule the World and Last Borns Want to Change It The book was fine. Reading along, I was nodding, agreeing, pulling out examples from my life, relationships, my own family, etc. I started telling wife about this trait and that behavior in myself, in her, in our sons, etc. Then, hmmm… it all felt a little too just so. I realized that this has the smell MBTI. ...

I did the thing I tell everyone not to do. Human, I guess. Do as I say, not as I do. Advice is easier to give, than to take. During the pandemic I started reading books on fiction writing. I’ve since read 100+ books on the topic. I also started listening to podcasts on the topic, since consuming many thousands of hours of discussion. Have I written novels and short stories? ...

I read “Ernest Hemingway on Writing” yesterday. Great stuff! The final passage got me, and made me chuckle. Here’s a snippet: You must be prepared to work always without applause. […] Finally, in some other place, some other time, when you can’t work and feel like hell you will pick up the book and look in it and start to read and go on and in a little while say to your wife, “Why this stuff is bloody marvelous.” ...

I love re-reading the short stories of H. P. Lovecraft each year. Especially his best works, his classics, like: The Call of Cthulhu At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Colour Out of Space The Dunwich Horror And on. Sure, Lovecraft is probably a terrible person, but awesome at his art (cosmic horror). Anyway, I often flirt with the idea of writing fiction, and writing horror short stories like Lovecraft, would be a great achievement for me. ...

I was thinking again about copywork. Chatting with some LLMs, we came up with a list of notable writers that are known to have used or advocated copywork. Here’s what we got (warning: quotes could be fabricated!): Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary) “I just wanted to feel what it felt like to write that well. I’d just type out pages of The Great Gatsby or A Farewell to Arms, just to get the feel of it inside me.” ...

I just saw this tweet go by Amjad Masad, Replit’s CEO: Whatever you need… make an app for that. Now on your phone. For everyone. Free. pic.twitter.com/hxFLGaCLmg — Amjad Masad (@amasad) February 4, 2025 It’s a video promoting “coding on the phone”. Watch it. Personal, bespoke, on-demand, disposable, etc. software. I love this! I love the direction we’re going! Some names for this, after chatting with my bro gpt4o: On-Demand Software Development: Like cloud computing, but for instant, local, personal software. Ephemeral Coding: Like Snapchat for code—software you generate when you need it, and discard when done. LLM-First Programming: The same way we talk about “Mobile-First” or “Cloud-First” design. Personal Computation: Instead of general-purpose software for others, this is about computing tailored to you. Generative Programming: Like generative art, but for software. The goal isn’t writing code—it’s guiding code into existence. I want the “thing”, not the hours of coding to get the thing. Especially with modern web-programming stacks that I don’t grok at all. Give me hugo :) ...

I’m reading “Tiny Habits” by B. J. Fogg. It’s a classic on behavior design, and I. can’t believe it took me this long to get to it. I love it so far. Lots of frameworks. Anyway, “motivation” is a big part of his framework. When I raised this, I raised an eyebrow. I thought we (collectively) had thrown out the idea of motivation in favor of discipline. As Jocko has been telling us for a decade: ...