Simon Willison

Quoting Paul Ford

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The article highlights Paul Ford’s observation that web browsers are extremely powerful for building applications, and the cost of leveraging that power is continually decreasing. It emphasizes the growing accessibility and affordability of browser-based development tools.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at Simon Willison.

Simon Willison
Oct 26

Quoting Jason Koebler

The article discusses how users of major tech platforms, frustrated by the lack of human customer support, are increasingly turning to ChatGPT for help with everyday tech issues. ChatGPT is reportedly suggesting that these users have uncovered a noteworthy story and that 404 Media can assist them. The piece highlights the growing role of AI in both troubleshooting and journalism.

Simon Willison
Oct 8

Quoting Carson Gross

The article discusses how computer programming fundamentally involves problem‑solving with computers and managing complexity. It argues that these skills will remain valuable and sustain a viable career even as AI tools become more prevalent.

Simon Willison
Sep 14

Quoting Laurie Voss

Laurie Voss argues that while the cost of writing code has fallen dramatically, the costs of reviewing, fixing, and operating software are rising and will continue to do so. She emphasizes that the true expense lies in understanding user needs, precisely defining requirements, and ensuring a pleasant user experience—costs that are unique to each software product and do not scale with reuse. As software demand grows without an upper limit, these user‑centric costs will dominate the overall development effort.

Simon Willison
Oct 29

Quoting Ben Hylak

Ben Hylak envisions a product architecture where every tool is a headless micro‑service that feeds into an agent, freeing developers from underlying complexities. The focus is on delivering a superior user interface that customers love, while the internal workings remain abstracted. This approach aims to combine powerful backend functionality with a delightful front‑end experience.

Simon Willison
Sep 11

Quoting Boris Cherny

The article discusses how production code generated by Claude, Anthropic’s AI, should meet higher standards than human-written code. Anthropic enforces this through numerous guardrails such as lint rules, extensive testing, Claude-driven end‑to‑end tests, daily fuzzers, automated code and security reviews, and automated refactoring. These measures aim to prevent the code from becoming difficult to maintain.

Simon Willison
Aug 23

Quoting Drew Breunig

The article reflects on the shift in perspective after the release of Fable, a new model that promised to solve many coding challenges at a comparable or lower cost. Prior to Fable, developers felt it was pointless to invest heavily in coding tools or context strategies, as newer models would likely render them obsolete. However, Fable’s performance was so impressive that, despite its high cost, it prompted a reevaluation of how work was distributed across different models such as Opus, 5.6, K3, and GLM.