Adam Keys
@therealadam.com
77 followers 160 following 270 posts
Engineering lead and full-stack developer. I'm trying to tell jokes here. Porsches, Disney parks, pub quiz, Star Wars, Destiny, music, television. We should all write more words.
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therealadam.com
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.🤣
therealadam.com
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.
therealadam.com
In a buyer’s market, for houses, cars, or employees, credentials and checkmarks create a hell of a blindspot.
therealadam.com
The din of roads and highways, whether nearby or distant, is the sound of the American city.
therealadam.com
A blog post can just…end.
therealadam.com
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.
Reposted by Adam Keys
mike.contribsys.com
Sidekiq is the headline sponsor for XORuby Portland. This Saturday, see you there?
beflagrant.com
🔥 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/
White textured background with purple tree silhouettes on sides. XO Ruby logo top left, 'xoruby.com' top right. Black text reads 'MAKE A SPLASH WITH RUBYISTS, PROGRAMMERS, AND TECH-MINDED FOLKS'. Orange text lists sponsor cities. Red button shows 'xoruby.com/firestarter'.
therealadam.com
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
therealadam.com
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_.
therealadam.com
Think of how much context space you’re wasting from all the times a coding agent says, “of course you’re right…”
therealadam.com
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.
jcsalterego.bsky.social
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.
Reposted by Adam Keys
taylor.town
the second best time to start a semiconductor fab is today
Reposted by Adam Keys
jcsalterego.bsky.social
ladies and gentlemen, the weekend
therealadam.com
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.
therealadam.com
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
therealadam.com
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
therealadam.com
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.
therealadam.com
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.
therealadam.com
If you make something easier to do, that doesn’t mean what people make (with your tool) is less good.
therealadam.com
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