I joined Twitter in 2007 and my brain slowly morphed over the next 15 years from hopelessly verbose to nihilistically pithy. I've kicked the Twitter habit, but the takes keep flowing. That's why I post them here and format them as a social network of one. You're welcome to bookmark any of these takes, though I'm not sure why you would.
By the way, the hearts and like counts are fake. They're just there to make you feel safe.
A weird consequence of Japan spanning a single time zone is that lots of apps stop working outside business hours for "maintenance".
I lost an hour today freaking out over error messages that my account was locked right around 11pm JST because (I now realize) their servers were only partially shut down.
Feels weird knowing—100%, not a doubt in my mind, knowing—that humanity will have cured cancer before it creates a system that can autonomously maintain an accurate inventory of the food available in one's kitchen.
This month's Searls of Wisdom newsletter just went out — it's all about how to travel well in an era of high prices, poor service, and crowded destinations. Sign up now and you'll get it: justin.searls.co/newsletter/
Just realized it's much more acceptable to say I'm too busy writing to have time for reading than it is to admit I'm too busy talking to have time for listening.
I started a new Rails app in January and I've now been hit by damn near decade-old bugs in 3 of Ruby's most popular gems. Who did I piss off? github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail/issues/1464
Until yesterday, I had never heard anyone but me in the Ruby community express confusion over the fact that Rails produced both paper_trail the audit log gem and Papertrail the logging SaaS.
But seriously, how the hell did everyone else keep these straight in conversation? (My bet is that they didn't, actually)
I just wrote this utility class for my Rails app to ensure my Rake tasks logged their output to my terminal without screwing up anything else.
Was this actually necessary? gist.github.com/searls/a2a642520b36594bb9002e2f75761eec
Breaking Change v6 includes a (rather spicy) PSA detailing how Stripe may be inadvertently giving your product away for free—oops! Probably my best episode yet. justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change-v6-pausing-doesnt-pause/
One of the most valuable things about writing automated tests is that they force you to run your code very many times in very many ways.
It's important to understand this is not a value of testing per se, though, and that there are other valid ways to achieve the same goal.
Two decades as a programmer hasn't made me any better at estimating how long it'll take me to write software, but it's made me MUCH better at estimating how long other things will take. I'm a master at intuitively timing multiple dishes to finish simultaneously, for example.
In hindsight, I think I may have spent a large number of years misdiagnosing myself as having a push notification management problem when I actually had a "too many people in my life" problem.
What's a framework feature you probably ought to use but you nevertheless avoid?
For me, it's file generators. I can barely remember why, but with the sole exception of database migrations I never take advantage of any of Rails' generator commands.
A lot of people are surprised Vision Pro's field-of-view is so narrow, but it makes sense if you think about it: even if Apple invents all the technologies needed to release a Vision product in an eyeglass form factor, it'll never be much wider than 90º.
Apple's resistance to proper VR features suggests they don't want us getting used to anything that wouldn't be possible in their ideal version of the product.
I thought programming was hard so I learned Japanese.
I thought Japanese was hard so I learned golf.
Golf was hard so
It's now been 20 years of fighting with it sporadically and I still can't figure out how to use launchctl to successfully automate tasks reliably on macOS. Such a frustrating piece of software.
If someone opens a half-baked pull request on your project and you really don't feel like doing the work to get it across the finish line, no reply will shut it down faster than telling them you'll merge it once they add tests.
Who the hell decided to name it @Dependabot and not @JohnnyDep?
January's Searls of Wisdom contained some big news about my new line of software products, including the launch of my first NEVER app, Beckygram. Subscribe to learn more justin.searls.co/newsletter/
Just survived my first flight with Apple Vision Pro. Watched 2 hours and 35 minutes of downloaded video and had 8% battery remaining.
If you've ever paid a significant amount of money for a seat upgrade, consider buying a Vision Pro instead. I literally forgot I was sitting in economy.