OpenAI's Dots Dichotomy
If your product can do everything, you run a real risk that no one uses it for anything.
OpenAI's Dots Dichotomy
ChatGPT's cutesy AI assistant feels torn between work and play...
Focus
7notes
Engineering in natural language
Since Opus 4.5 arrived late last year, I’ve thought the future of software engineering would be engineers working with AI agents in natural language. The underlying code would increasingly be written and understood primarily by AI. DHH describes that shift in his Rails World opening keynote. Describing what the software should do becomes a larger part of the work, while agents handle more of the implementation.
That could eventually give us entirely new programming languages designed around agents. Rust already hints at the shift. A language can be unpleasant for a human to write and still be a great choice for the resulting software. DHH’s experience with Rust puts that tradeoff into practice: agents handle the code, while the product benefits from its performance and small executables.
I think this leads to better software. More of the effort can go toward making the product work well, including improvements that previously cost too much to justify. Engineers still have to figure out what to build and how it should work, then judge whether the result delivers that experience. Those decisions remain human work even as less of the implementation requires human hands.
Taste becomes even more important when almost any feature is within reach. Being able to build everything makes it easier to produce a product that tries to do everything, and those products tend to be poor. Good products have focus. It takes judgment to choose what belongs and discipline to leave the rest out, even when adding it is cheap.
September 2026
Less is more, but to get less you have to do more
A great reminder from Rick Rubin on why less is more.
This lesson applies directly to product design. Some of the best products in the world are simple and focused because their makers decide to do less. That restraint takes work: choosing what matters most, refining it, and saying no to everything that dilutes it.
instagram.comLess is more, but to get less you have to do more
A reminder from Rick Rubin that simplicity is the result of doing the work.
June 2026
If you’re going to get into something, you ought to pursue it to its full extent. If you’re not interested enough to do that, don’t bother getting into it. Find the few things you love; don’t waste your time on the many things you merely like.
Matt Mullenweg: ‘All Roads Lead to Om’
Link to: https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-forever/
December 2013
Berkshire Hathaway, despite a market value now approaching one quarter of a trillion dollars, is managed from a tiny office with a staff smaller than a soccer team’s starting roster. Buffett is not the slave to a corporate calendar jammed with the humdrum inanities of business life like performance assessments, facilities planning, analyst meetings, compliance training, budget reviews and travel. This leaves him time to read and think so that for Buffett the only real difference between a weekday and the weekend is that for two days the markets are closed. Buffett is no fan of spreadsheets or reams of analytical mumbo-jumbo. Facts, a pen, a sheet of paper and an agile mind are his tools.
The Collected Wisdom of Warren Buffett
There is no greater advertisement for the potent combination of formidable intelligence, commonsense, consistency and self-discipline than Warren Buffett. Tap Dancing to Work, Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966 – 2012, a collection of articles about and by Omaha’s most famous citizen, dr
May 2013
The tax that comes with introducing any new feature into your product is high. I cannot stress this enough. Sure, maybe the new feature isn’t hard to build, maybe it only takes a couple days and a handful of people, maybe it can be shipped and delivered by next week. And maybe the additional cognitive load for a user isn’t high — it’s just an extra icon here, after all, or an extra slot in a menu there. But once your new feature is out there, it’s out there. A real thing used by real people.
The tax of new