Living to learn, learning to live.
Washington, D.C.
Joined April 2009
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Joey Spooner retweeted
CFOs realizing that their AI token budget is going to be higher than the salaries of the people they laid off
Joey Spooner retweeted
"Using coding agents well is taking every inch of my 25 years of experience as a software engineer, and it is mentally exhausting.
I can fire up four agents in parallel and have them work on four different problems, and by 11am I am wiped out for the day.
There is a limit on human cognition. Even if you're not reviewing everything they're doing, how much you can hold in your head at one time. There's a sort of personal skill that we have to learn, which is finding our new limits. What is a responsible way for us to not burn out, and for us to use the time that we have?" @simonw
"Using coding agents well is taking every inch of my 25 years of experience as a software engineer."
Simon Willison (@simonw) is one of the most prolific independent software engineers and most trusted voices on how AI is changing the craft of building software. He co-created Django, coined the term "prompt injection," and popularized the terms "agentic engineering" and "AI slop."
In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:
🔸 Why November 2025 was an inflection point
🔸 The "dark factory" pattern
🔸 Why mid-career engineers (not juniors) are the most at risk right now
🔸 Three agentic engineering patterns he uses daily: red/green TDD, thin templates, hoarding
🔸 Why he writes 95% of his code from his phone while walking the dog
🔸 Why he thinks we're headed for an AI Challenger disaster
🔸 How a pelican riding a bicycle became the unofficial benchmark for AI model quality
Listen now 👇
youtu.be/wc8FBhQtdsA
Joey Spooner retweeted
Mail-in voting has benefits like increased access, but concerns about fraud persist. Studies from Brookings, Brennan Center, and NPR show fraud is rare and not outcome-altering in US elections. Isolated cases exist per Heritage Foundation data. Many countries like Switzerland, UK, and Australia use postal voting successfully. Abolition could limit participation; stronger safeguards might address issues without full removal. What's your take?
Joey Spooner retweeted
PSA: If you hit play on “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins at 11:56:20PM this New Year’s Eve, the drum fill will welcome you into 2026. Start the year the right way.
📸 Terry O’Neill
Joey Spooner retweeted
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.
Let’s define “laziness” anew—to endure a non-ideal existence, to let circumstance or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window. The size of your bank account doesn’t change this, nor does the number of hours you log in handling unimportant e-mail or minutiae.
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
Would be nice if @Starbucks published their order lead times on a board for customers before they make a purchase. This goes double for airports when you’re crunched on time.
Life thought - When it's broken, it's broken. When it's breaking, but not broken yet, just break the damn thing.
Is there a product out there with a subscription service that reduces the number of features you get? Like the service adapts to your needs instead of overflowing with cadenced notifications of new features?
Joey Spooner retweeted
In business, there is almost nothing I like more than a quiet killer.
The ones that are a little introverted. Brilliant.
Who stay behind the scenes, no big fuss, and not press-seeking...Just an absolute monster who pulls it off.
Joey Spooner retweeted
The northern permafrost region of the Arctic now emits more greenhouse gases than it capture - agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
As a reminder, "In the past, rapid changes in atmospheric methane have signaled rapid global climate shifts" - agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
Joey Spooner retweeted
The real scandal is that leaders think that creating the “process” and “scalable system” in the latter example *is their job*
Everyone is incentivized to add complexity because it justifies their scope.
Fight this as much as you can.
Startup vs Big Company Dynamics
Startup
• Observation: Users want a new feature.
• Designer (60 min later): Here are some figma prototypes.
• Engineer: We can ship this by the end of the week.
Big Company:
• Observation: Let’s discuss our observations when Suzy’s back; targeting end of month.
End of Month: Bob should really be in this meeting, let’s reschedule.
• Meeting: Users want this feature. We’ll need Jessica's buy-in.
• Jessica Meeting: Presented six weeks of research for the new feature.
• Jessica: This can fit into our H2 planning.
• H2 Kickoff: Remember users want this feature?
• Product Manager: Will draft a product brief that will be ready for H2's second cycle.
• Designer: Drafted designs in Figma, ready for the next review.
• Design Review: Why this feature? Should we prioritize X instead?
• Outcome: Feature sidelined. Cycle repeats.
**Note** This isn’t subtweeting but the reality of software development at scale. Whether you're a startup or a big company, it’s crucial to streamline to avoid this. Success breeds complexity, but no startup is immune.
Joey Spooner retweeted
During a solar eclipse, the gaps between leaves on trees act as multiple pinhole cameras,
and each gap projects its own crescent-shaped image of the eclipsed sun onto the ground.
📹gottigreen
Joey Spooner retweeted
At 11:35 pm on October 3, 2021, Ruth Hamilton, a 66-year-old woman from Canada, was abruptly awakened from her sleep at her home in British Columbia by a startling noise.
Initially, she speculated that a tree might have fallen over. Yet, upon closer consideration, the sound seemed more like an explosion than a tree collapsing. This prompted her to call the cops.
While still on the call, she flicked on the light and noticed a fist-sized, dark gray object resting on her pillow.
With surprise, she exclaimed, "Oh my God, there's a rock in my bed!"
The object happened to be a meteorite, weighing almost 1.3 kg.
After completing its journey from space, it landed on her pillow, just about 10 cm away from her head.
