1 July 2026

43 links · Wednesday

StoneHedge Labs

I reached for the LLM first. Scale taught me to reach for it last.

Replay :: Box2D

Replay is a new system I developed for Box2D. The main goal is to allow users to send me files I can use to reproduce bugs. Because Box2D is open source, I can rarely run a user’s game or see their code in full context. This makes it hard to track down problem…

Stripe Needs Client-Specific ACH IDs

We ran into a strange issue recently that feels like something Stripe should help solve. A payment was rejected, and after a lot of back and forth, we finally figured out why. One vendor had tried to debit our account for an amount that should have been offset…

big loads offgrid with a small battery (sidelined)

No matter that the hype cycle wants you to think, the renewable energy transition is the biggest thing happening in tech and it's happening faster and faster. Despite being neck deep in it personally with offgrid solar projects, most recently solar hot water, …

Karl Koch | On the semantic web

Semantic HTML is interface infrastructure: native elements carry behaviour, accessibility, form semantics, keyboard support, and platform adaptation before styling begins.

Trying to manufacture permission

I wanna expand on something I wrote a few months ago: One of the features of “AI” is the diffusion of responsibility: “AI” systems are being put in all kinds of processes and when they fuck up (and they always fuck up) it was just the “AI”, or “someone should …

Why I like snake_case

This is odd for a JavaScript developer, but I like snake_case. Traditionally, JavaScript developers are most familiar with camelCase. That’s the conventio...

LCARS Raylib app - offline voice recognition & UI editing

LCARS voice recognition & UI editing This is the continuation in the series of LCARS app development: LCARS Elbow LCARS Frame LCARS Text Editor In the last post I built a text editor from scratch for the Captain’s-log use-case. This time I added three things t…

Trust is not Governance

Google DeepMind's reported Pentagon contract shows why trust and safety culture can't substitute for real governance: independent oversight, transparency, accountability; and protected employee voice.

SOLID and Clean Code never felt solid or clean to me

I learned to program through online documentation and projects. I also read books but I don’t consider them pivotal to my programming or software engineering career. Some of the books I read are: Designing Data-Intensive Applications: really good book. The…

Why I Stopped Arguing With People

I am a software engineer, and I used to enjoy arguing with people for technical correctness. Code reviews, design meetings, mailing-list threads, dinner tables. If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected …

Odd gestures in public

Apple’s watch fulfilled the prophecy made by Brazilian pop duo Claudinho e Buchecha back in 1998 — and suddenly, I could control my calendar — and many other things — without using my hands.

Bringing Claude Code Into Neovim

I live in two places: a terminal running Claude Code and Neovim. For months I bounced between them. Edit in Neovim, alt-tab to the terminal, paste a file path, ask Claude something, alt-tab back, apply the change by hand. The friction was small but constant, a…

A Deadline Is a Constraint, Not a Threat

A deadline becomes a threat when date, scope, and quality are all fixed at once but a useful constraint when it forces a team to decide what must be true first. This post is about why even autonomous teams get stuck, what separates the "smallest coherent chang…

Most rewrites serve the engineer, not the business

The urge to rewrite working code usually serves the engineer, not the business. A test for when a rewrite is worth it, and what AI does and doesn't change.

Grief, Growth, and my Future as a Programmer

As AI transforms software development, this is my honest account of moving from fear and resistance to adaptation and the mindset shifts I’m making to stay relevant and fulfilled.

stop asking writers about "AI"

Every time I tell someone new that I’m a writer, they pause for a moment, then ask the same question: “So, what do you think about AI?” This question has been sapping my motivation to write for years.