7 notes
Billions of phones run on code looked after by a handful of people. We counted them from the code itself.
Four billion phones ask one text file what time it is. One lecturer keeps it in his spare time. We counted the rest.
At what point will a Muse be able to communicate and coordinate with other Muses? “Have your Muse call my Muse.” I can see that becoming a normal thing to say. Maybe not specific to Muse, but with agents in general.
If each Muse understands its person’s preferences and availability, they could work out the details of shared plans, like finding a time and place for dinner. Handing off that back-and-forth could be an interesting unlock.
This applies well beyond Muse. Agents could use email or messaging to coordinate, but there’s an opportunity for personal agents to adopt a shared protocol for direct communication across providers. Products would need to let their users’ agents both initiate and receive requests, with permission to act on their behalf.
The appeal is the same as email: I can choose the provider that works for me and still communicate with people using another one. I’d like that freedom when choosing an agent, too.
I drive a 1965 Corvette Stingray that was my father’s. There’s joy in keeping it in good condition and operational, and there’s joy in driving it. Its history gives both of those things more meaning than they would have with another car.
This Type 7 film captures that kind of attachment. It opens with a thought about making things people will want to keep using:
We want people to use what we make with affection for a long time.
That seems like a good ambition for anything worth making. An object can continue to be useful while becoming more meaningful to the person who owns it. Time spent caring for it becomes part of the pleasure of having it.
Later, the film connects that attachment to use:
I think affection includes the enjoyment of using it.
I feel that with the Corvette. Keeping it running lets me enjoy it as a car, while preserving something that matters to me because it was my father’s. Driving it adds to its history. I get to care for what it already means to me and keep enjoying it in the present.
If your product can do everything, you run a real risk that no one uses it for anything.
ChatGPT's cutesy AI assistant feels torn between work and play...
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.