Philip Winston
@metastable.org
Writer | Programmer: Graphics, Games, Neuroscience, AI. Gamedev: Guitar Hero. Podcast Host: Software Engineering Radio. Writing at metastable.org and tobeva.com.
A sane hype-free argument you shouldn't be reading every line of code your agents produce. youtu.be/DNN8cHqRIB8
Can You Name What You're Looking For?
The skill that made you senior—reading every diff, knowing every pattern, being the arbiter of "good enough"—might be the thing that's slowing you down now.I...
www.youtube.com
January 23, 2026 at 3:56 PM
A sane hype-free argument you shouldn't be reading every line of code your agents produce. youtu.be/DNN8cHqRIB8
Can't creat a @letterboxd account because I cannot solve their captcha. The two toothbrushes are not cleaning supplies, tried that.
January 23, 2026 at 4:16 AM
Can't creat a @letterboxd account because I cannot solve their captcha. The two toothbrushes are not cleaning supplies, tried that.
Agentic coding vs. hand coding is like riding a bike vs. walking. You can go way faster on bike, at times, but that comes with the potential for nasty wrecks, much worse than while walking. Also, in very steepest uphills you can stall on a bike, and be forced to walk it up.
January 23, 2026 at 2:12 AM
Agentic coding vs. hand coding is like riding a bike vs. walking. You can go way faster on bike, at times, but that comes with the potential for nasty wrecks, much worse than while walking. Also, in very steepest uphills you can stall on a bike, and be forced to walk it up.
Agentic coding is a hand-of-god for older developers who have oceans of crystallized intelligence but not the appetite or stamina to chew glass late into the night working out every detail.
January 22, 2026 at 8:58 PM
Agentic coding is a hand-of-god for older developers who have oceans of crystallized intelligence but not the appetite or stamina to chew glass late into the night working out every detail.
Eh, it looks “okay” but the tech will improve. radiancefields.com/a-ap-rocky-...
A$AP Rocky Releases Helicopter Music Video featuring Gaussian Splatting - Radiance Fields
This is actually not the first time A$AP has used Radiance Fields in a music video.
radiancefields.com
January 22, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Eh, it looks “okay” but the tech will improve. radiancefields.com/a-ap-rocky-...
I'm finding to get Claude Code to do something complicated I need to give it essentially as much debugging information as I would have needed. You need to a common language in which to discuss things.
January 22, 2026 at 3:01 AM
I'm finding to get Claude Code to do something complicated I need to give it essentially as much debugging information as I would have needed. You need to a common language in which to discuss things.
I was surprised to discover you need to fetch your images from CloudFlare or the first access off R2 will be super slow. This is running the script the second time, so all mostly all hits. Not sure how often it will evict, TLL is set to 1 year.
January 22, 2026 at 12:17 AM
I was surprised to discover you need to fetch your images from CloudFlare or the first access off R2 will be super slow. This is running the script the second time, so all mostly all hits. Not sure how often it will evict, TLL is set to 1 year.
It's possibly to write ANY software with Claude Code because you can tell Claude "go to line 123 and in column 16 write the character 'f' then 'o' then 'r' then space then '(' etc. So you can ALWAYS recursively subdivide the problem until you arrive at something the agent can do.
January 21, 2026 at 6:57 PM
It's possibly to write ANY software with Claude Code because you can tell Claude "go to line 123 and in column 16 write the character 'f' then 'o' then 'r' then space then '(' etc. So you can ALWAYS recursively subdivide the problem until you arrive at something the agent can do.
Steve Yegge said for 25 years Joel Spolsky was right about his essay “Things You Should Never Do, Part I” which said never do the big rewrite. Steve said that's changing with agentic coding.
January 21, 2026 at 2:04 AM
Steve Yegge said for 25 years Joel Spolsky was right about his essay “Things You Should Never Do, Part I” which said never do the big rewrite. Steve said that's changing with agentic coding.
An important thing with agentic coding is asking for features which are "implementable". If you don't, the AI will rarely say "this is impossible" it will just serve up attempt after attempt that doesn't work, which can be incredibly frustrating as the developer.
January 20, 2026 at 8:58 PM
An important thing with agentic coding is asking for features which are "implementable". If you don't, the AI will rarely say "this is impossible" it will just serve up attempt after attempt that doesn't work, which can be incredibly frustrating as the developer.
Them: "Your DNS changes may take up to 24 hours to propagate".
Me: Checks 15 seconds later to see if it's happened already.
Me: Checks 15 seconds later to see if it's happened already.
January 20, 2026 at 4:14 AM
Them: "Your DNS changes may take up to 24 hours to propagate".
Me: Checks 15 seconds later to see if it's happened already.
Me: Checks 15 seconds later to see if it's happened already.
Top 10 dream features for Claude Code:
1) Continual learning for the lifetime of the project
2) 100x faster
1) Continual learning for the lifetime of the project
2) 100x faster
January 20, 2026 at 12:11 AM
Top 10 dream features for Claude Code:
1) Continual learning for the lifetime of the project
2) 100x faster
1) Continual learning for the lifetime of the project
2) 100x faster
In all my imaginations growing up, I never pictured a future like the one we living in.
January 19, 2026 at 11:09 PM
In all my imaginations growing up, I never pictured a future like the one we living in.
Indefatigable is good choice of word. It’s a weird thing no matter what you ask for, it will dive in 0.2 seconds later. May or may not succeed but always tries.
January 19, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Indefatigable is good choice of word. It’s a weird thing no matter what you ask for, it will dive in 0.2 seconds later. May or may not succeed but always tries.
Alexa just told me 1/5th of a inch of snow is expected. That’s around 0.5mm of rain. Sig figs anyone?
January 19, 2026 at 5:56 PM
Alexa just told me 1/5th of a inch of snow is expected. That’s around 0.5mm of rain. Sig figs anyone?
Unexpected perk of agentic coding you can walk away with it running. No cost if not in use. Come back days later and go “okay wtf was I doing” and it brings you up to speed perfectly.
January 19, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Unexpected perk of agentic coding you can walk away with it running. No cost if not in use. Come back days later and go “okay wtf was I doing” and it brings you up to speed perfectly.
How many AIs people have running on their behalf will resemble the use of CPU cores. Most people will use just one, but some power users will use 100% of whatever they can afford to buy.
January 19, 2026 at 4:12 AM
How many AIs people have running on their behalf will resemble the use of CPU cores. Most people will use just one, but some power users will use 100% of whatever they can afford to buy.
Great tagline for a film. The movie has odd tone, we're basically watching over the shoulder of a hired-killer as he methodically tries to survive and restore his life after a botched killing sends him on the run.
January 19, 2026 at 3:16 AM
Great tagline for a film. The movie has odd tone, we're basically watching over the shoulder of a hired-killer as he methodically tries to survive and restore his life after a botched killing sends him on the run.
JSON beat XML at data and then Markdown beat XML at text.
January 18, 2026 at 9:14 PM
JSON beat XML at data and then Markdown beat XML at text.
Whenever I see a famous actor like Brad Pitt, whose character is struggling in a film, I think to myself, just quit what you are doing and go become an actor, you'd be amazing at it.
January 18, 2026 at 4:18 PM
Whenever I see a famous actor like Brad Pitt, whose character is struggling in a film, I think to myself, just quit what you are doing and go become an actor, you'd be amazing at it.
Teach an AI to fish: Claude was struggling with my movie timeline layout, so I gave had it start using Puppeteer to capture screenshots, and had it add extra debug information on screen.
January 18, 2026 at 1:02 AM
Teach an AI to fish: Claude was struggling with my movie timeline layout, so I gave had it start using Puppeteer to capture screenshots, and had it add extra debug information on screen.
There's a story of the Beatles and their van was broken down and they were standing on the side of the road. One of them looked to the other and said, "Something will happen” and that became a motto of theirs.
January 17, 2026 at 10:13 PM
There's a story of the Beatles and their van was broken down and they were standing on the side of the road. One of them looked to the other and said, "Something will happen” and that became a motto of theirs.
I use the word 'opine' a lot talking to Claude Code, such as "opine if it's better to do A or B." I'm not sure it works better than "would it be better to do A or B?" but opine means "express an opinion or belief, especially in a formal or deliberate way.".
January 17, 2026 at 6:04 PM
I use the word 'opine' a lot talking to Claude Code, such as "opine if it's better to do A or B." I'm not sure it works better than "would it be better to do A or B?" but opine means "express an opinion or belief, especially in a formal or deliberate way.".
Amazing Scott Alexander post on Scott Adams. I too was a young Dilbert fan, emailed him and received a reply, read many of his non-Dilbert books, and then watched his fall into right-wing madness with festering lament: www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-dilbe...
The Dilbert Afterlife
Sixty-eight years of highly defective people
www.astralcodexten.com
January 17, 2026 at 1:52 PM
Amazing Scott Alexander post on Scott Adams. I too was a young Dilbert fan, emailed him and received a reply, read many of his non-Dilbert books, and then watched his fall into right-wing madness with festering lament: www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-dilbe...
People who argue about "the right way" to develop software, like to use AI tools, often under appreciate the range in types of software that people work on.
January 17, 2026 at 3:13 AM
People who argue about "the right way" to develop software, like to use AI tools, often under appreciate the range in types of software that people work on.