71–80 of 88 posts
https://map.simonsarris.com/ Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
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Yeah, honestly the answer is mainly not having a proper job (I don't have anyone who can tell me how to spend my time) combined with constructive procrastination: I've not been making nearly as much progress on my main projects over the past couple of months because there's been way too much stuff I want to write about. I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten min…
One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"? The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things. I'm wondering how you balance that.
I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November and December, I'm trying to get it back for January.
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One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"? The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things. I'm wondering how you balance that.
Having relevant projects is key. My https://llm.datasette.io projects gives me the ideal playground for trying stuff out - any time a new API model comes out I can spin up a new plugin to for LLM, which is a great way to try the model with limited development time (most API plugins are a few dozen lines of code). I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November an…
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
Simon Willison’s blog: https://simonwillison.net/ . How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job? My god, I wish I were that productive.
The answer is almost always personal support / personal assistants. There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc. These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on. (This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.
It helped me get up to speed with gen AI as a graduate school professor and now his posts are the most useful ones I sent to others to help them get oriented.
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Don't bother with this one - the latest post (The Return of Magic) is promoting a load of unscientific woo (The Telepathy Tapes). The author seems to seriously mean the title of the post literally.
I started reading the first half of that. I definitely sense what you’re sensing but I’m curious, what is it that you object to specifically?
https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepathy-tapes-is-tak...
https://map.simonsarris.com/ Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
If by some chance you haven't stumbled upon Montaigne, I'd encourage you to try.
Shameless plug: https://techtalksweekly.io/ I publish one post a week with all the recently uploaded talks from nearly all software engineering conferences to save my readers time from endlessly scrolling through messy YT subscriptions and to reduce FOMO. On top of that, each week, I pick a few talks that I think are a must-watch and write a short narrative to give some context.
I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it.
Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons.
He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post:
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-br...