Joy & Curiosity #85

We launched a completely rebuilt Amp this week.

Amp Neo (it started as a codename, but I’ve grown really fond of it) is remote controllable, supports plugins as a first-class feature, has compaction you don’t have to worry about, and is a lot more efficient and faster than the old Amp.

It is one of the most elaborate systems I’ve ever worked on. A coding agent split into three parts: the tools here, the interface there, and the loop in an infinitely scalable system over there.

Some day I’ll hopefully write about building it. I learned a lot about programming with agents in the last two months.

We’ve spent the whole week scaling this system for the demand and are still working on it. “Scaling problems are good problems to have” definitely feels like a fortune cookie laughing at you when you’re staring at graphs and logs every hour of the day.

People love Neo and can’t get enough of it. We’re now the “ferrari of coding agents”.

But I also barely read anything this week except logs, so this edition of the newsletter is very short.

• This is beautiful: “For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day. In 2026, the music is out of phase with the work.” What a nice piece of writing and, man, this idea that some people find out early what they want and what’s enough for them and know that it won’t ever change has stuck with me: “Other kids my age were figuring out what they liked, trying things on, growing into and out of phases. I was watching them do it from a desk. I had picked early. I started writing code as a kid. I heard Phish for the first time at thirteen. By the time I was fifteen and had a professional gig, the picking was settled. I had two things, and I didn’t want a third.”

• I somehow missed this earlier, but Aphyr’s The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess is now a series of articles. It’s an epub too!

• Alloway’s Antidote To Baumol’s Cost Disease. This was very interesting to throw into ChatGPT and ask questions about.

• I love reading David Sedaris’ writing and this week, after a very long day, after my brain had shut off, I read his newest piece in the New Yorker and smiled.

• Six Years Perfecting Maps on watchOS. There’s so many thoughts that come up when reading this today: will craftsmanship like this exist in the future? would AI have sped things up? was it worth it? how much impact did the real world experience and testing have? what would’ve happened had he hired the designer earlier? But the most important one: I love reading posts like this one.

• Check the margins on bread.

• AI is Breaking Two Vulnerability Cultures.

• “As so often with German, there is a word for the kind of environment: Lehrwerkstatt. Literally: A teaching workshop. The whole shop floor is the classroom. You learn by being near the work. Being a constant learner is one of the core values of the firm.”