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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 6h

Does every writer imagine themself as their hero at the typewriter?
Or, scribbling (a masterpiece, of course) on a napkin.

No, just me, imagining Caro or Vonnegut? Weird.🤣

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 1d

Expired: glancing at server log files to see what’s going on.

Tired: glancing at Slack messages to see what’s going on.

Wired: glancing at agent activity to see what it’s building.

Inspired: glancing at application logs to see what the agent is _really_ building.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 2d

In a buyer’s market, for houses, cars, or employees, credentials and checkmarks create a hell of a blindspot.

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 5d

The din of roads and highways, whether nearby or distant, is the sound of the American city.

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 6d

therealadam.com/2025/10/06/...

Adam Keys is Thinking

A blog post can just end. Informality is an advantage, most …

therealadam.com

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 6d

A blog post can just…end.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 7d

p.s. the future of apps, I hope, looks like Muse

apps.apple.com/us/story/id...

‎App of the Day: Muse — canvas for ideas

‎Learn about Explore Your Ideas With Whiteboards on Mac App Store. Download Muse — canvas for ideas and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

apps.apple.com

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 7d

Muse is featured on the App Store and you should check it out. It's one of the fastest, well considered, and dare I say "tactile" apps out there. Plus, the people who created it are some of the smartest and most helpful folks out there.

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Reposted by Adam Keys

Mike Perham @mike.contribsys.com · 8d

Sidekiq is the headline sponsor for XORuby Portland. This Saturday, see you there?

Flagrant @beflagrant.com · 8d

🔥 XO Ruby is seeking sponsors for our multi-city tour!
Help us bring Ruby developers together across 6 cities. Your support strengthens the Ruby community nationwide.
www.xoruby.com/firestarter/

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 8d

You should consider how stuffing a lot of text into apps you really like might simplify your world, at least once a year or so.

therealadam.com/2025/10/04/...

Adam Keys is Thinking

I am told that you can enter thousands of words in a note …

therealadam.com

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 8d

You can put a whole lot of words in a note attached to a task in Things. This seems like arbitrary trivia at first! But, it might just simplify your “productivity stack” so you can _actually do more things_.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 9d

therealadam.com/2025/10/04/...

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 9d

Think of how much context space you’re wasting from all the times a coding agent says, “of course you’re right…”

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 9d

I always figured this was the end-game for Lady Gaga. Finally finishes her dissertation, gets her Ph.D in performance art, hangs up her meat dress, and gets back to her sourdough starter.

Jerry Chen @jcsalterego.bsky.social · 10d

Good evening. "Jerry Chen" was a 27-month sociological experiment studying Poster's Madness conducted by Quinnipiac University. We are now complete with our study; thank you for your time.

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Reposted by Adam Keys

taylor.town @taylor.town · 10d

the second best time to start a semiconductor fab is today

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 12d

Modern applications can’t hope to escape towering chains of complexity. Careful consideration of trade-offs and a bit of gardening are the way through.

"If you don’t read, you won’t succeed.

– Tom MacWright, How to keep pa... https://therealadam.com/2025/09/30/modern-applications-cant-hope-to.html

Adam Keys is Thinking

Modern applications can’t hope to escape towering chains of complexity. Careful consideration of trade-offs and a bit of gardening are the way through. If you don’t read, you won’t succeed. – Tom MacWright, How to keep package.json under control Possibly the best one-liner advice on managing dependencies out there. You might as well get good at understanding and mitigating the carried complexity.

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Reposted by Adam Keys

Jerry Chen @jcsalterego.bsky.social · 19d

ladies and gentlemen, the weekend

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 19d

Going to the symphony this weekend for the first time in many years. 😀 On the program:

- My second favorite piano concerto (Tchaikovsky)
- My second favorite tone poem (Also Sprach Zarathustra)

Binging The Gilded Age is (likely) to thank for this.

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 19d

On the upside, I’ve finally settled on a task list app and no grass seems greener.
To the status quo, the notes/writing app grass always seems greener elsewhere.

therealadam.com/2010/05/26/...

The art of making a useful todo list

I have a tenuous relationship with todo lists. Rather than …

therealadam.com

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 21d

But, I think there’s plenty of room to produce great work without elite skill. ZZ Top and AC/DC are far less sophisticated, and their members less talented, than Prince or Van Halen, but still produce work that carries an appeal of its own.

therealadam.com/2025/09/09/...

Easier doesn’t mean less good

Explosion of mediocrity, video gaming edition: it’s …

therealadam.com

Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 21d

The work you observe might also be more uniform or bland, since making something accessible often means many folks are starting from similar templates or boilerplates.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 21d

If you make it easier to do, less devoted, determined, or talented people will do it. More people means you will see more volume, making “merely” average work seem more common.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 21d

If you make something easier to do, that doesn’t mean what people make (with your tool) is less good.

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 22d

📚Comfy sci-fi novels: they're nice!

therealadam.com/2025/09/11/...

Adam Keys is Thinking

📚_The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet_, Becky Chambers …

therealadam.com

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Adam Keys @therealadam.com · 23d

That said, it’s wild that the way out of the tar pit, might be “ask a coding agent to translate from one language to another for you”. 🤯

therealadam.com/2025/09/16/...

Adam Keys is Thinking

Polyglot runtimes have arrived and fizzled throughout my …

therealadam.com

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