The Curious Engineer

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Nate Meyvis

natemeyvis.com

Pulpit! Canst thou not make a pulpit, by simply inverting the nearest tub...[^1] I am an itinerant software engineer who likes to raise children, read, an...

Software / engineering practiceAI / MLEssays / personal

’15’20’25
Posts
487 from 1 Aug 2011 to 29 Oct 2026
Posting
about daily (260 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 226

  1. My PRs are getting larger
  2. Lambda
  3. AI and leisure time
  4. Where is all the new, good software?
  5. On writing a PDF reader
  6. Summer reading 2026
  7. New theories and new software
  8. Reading notes: 'Will in the World'
  9. Software wish lists are useful
  10. Notes on long-running LLM tasks
  11. Unreasonably effective LLM pattern of the day
  12. Jevmaxxing
  13. A programming mentality
  14. I've been overrating queueing services
  15. Reading notes: 'An Anthology of Our Extraordinary Earth'
  16. AWS, Vercel, and Amdahl's Law
  17. Reading notes: 'Netherland'
  18. AI and some new division-of-labor problems
  19. Family history and AI-friendly software
  20. More notes on bug blindness
  21. Notes on Flash 3.8
  22. First impressions of Fable 5.1
  23. Dan Luu on bug blindness
  24. Generative AI and the psychology of failed experiments
  25. Reading notes: 'All the Beauty in the World'
  26. AI skepticism in philosophy
  27. Some recent applications of AI
  28. Reading notes: 'Romola'
  29. The encapsulation-performance tradeoff
  30. Nicholas Charriere on ambition and fatherhood
  31. Some failures of encapsulation
  32. Notes about encapsulation
  33. Reading notes: 'Persepolis'
  34. Reading notes: 'Music: A Subversive History'
  35. Spaced repetition, APIs, and generative AI
  36. The last decade of front-end engineering
  37. Reading notes: 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'
  38. Try the very fast models
  39. Reading notes: 'Norwegian Wood'
  40. Reading notes: 'Gullah Geechee Home Cooking'
  41. Is software enshittified?
  42. Civic applications of generative AI
  43. Reading notes: 'Banal Nightmare'
  44. Reading notes: 'A Month in the Country'
  45. Fallbacks are worse than we think they are
  46. Do LLMs make code a "materialized view"?
  47. Reading notes: 'The Song of the Lark'
  48. Reading notes: 'Prisoner of Trebekistan'
  49. Laser tag strategy post
  50. A use of code comments
  51. Reading notes: 'Make Believe'
  52. Reading notes: 'Notes From a Small Island'
  53. My mental model of React
  54. Reading notes: 'Everything We Do is Music'
  55. "Write for one person"
  56. AI and the job market for philosophers
  57. Reading notes: 'Sartor Resartus'
  58. Google's Dreambeans app
  59. Taking a week off
  60. Humanistic reactions to Fable
  61. I wrote a poker trip report in 2011
  62. Performance, generality, and accessibility
  63. The purist's model of spaced repetition
  64. Notes on software performance
  65. Going-analog update
  66. Should programmers be more specialized?
  67. The "growing market demand for ontologists"
  68. First thoughts about token limits
  69. The dynamic map labelling problem
  70. Childhood and sports fandom
  71. Really fast feedback is great
  72. Why are the Knicks compelling?
  73. Reading notes: 'The Wapshot Chronicle'
  74. The future of migrations, again
  75. Griping about the Clock app
  76. The Monet question
  77. Catch-all post
  78. Luck surface area
  79. Start-with-this recommendations
  80. You really don't have to use Substack
  81. The sociology of poker tells
  82. The bitter lesson resists memeification
  83. Still going analog
  84. Notes on AI "cathedrals"
  85. On tokenmaxxing
  86. Reading notes: 'Oranges'
  87. Going analog
  88. Gmail's AI-powered search works well
  89. Reading notes: 'Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise'
  90. The book I most regret having read
  91. Who should Tyler Cowen interview?
  92. Reading notes: 'Twelfth Night'
  93. On using worktrees
  94. What am I doing here?
  95. Informal greedy algorithms
  96. Glassman on markets
  97. Notes on AI adoption and employment
  98. On doing "deeper work" with AI
  99. Many people dislike AI
  100. Lessons from making software about using software
  101. Used bookstores and randomness
  102. The Professional
  103. Higher-order effects of LLM slop
  104. On contemplating quitting Twitter
  105. On prototyping
  106. A tradeoff in defining database schemas
  107. Reading notes: 'The Poisoned King'
  108. Some data on the shape of the forgetting curve
  109. Why is there so much bad code at big companies?
  110. The case against LLM prose
  111. Kirkby and Matuschak on making flashcards with LLMs
  112. The case against worrying about your posts' analytics
  113. Spaced repetition scheduling and categorization
  114. Spaced repetition performance after long intervals
  115. Some empirical spaced-repetition results
  116. Consuming nonfiction audio
  117. First impressions of Opus 4.7
  118. Tacit knowledge follow-up
  119. "Harness engineering" is not new
  120. Are major AI tools diverging?
  121. We're using more tacit knowledge than we think we are
  122. Prompt maximalism
  123. The Norton anthology lifestyle
  124. Utilities I use
  125. Catch-all post: April 8, 2026
  126. Cognitive debt and optimism
  127. Agentic coding and microservices
  128. Notes on making small apps with AI
  129. Not all of this is new
  130. Justin Duke on film, writing, and consumption
  131. My new basic stance
  132. Another reason we can't measure our productivity with AI
  133. (Why) do big-company engineers like AI less?
  134. The Marco saga as a case for 10x engineering
  135. Do managers really like generative AI more?
  136. Notes on making 2,500 pancakes
  137. The end of the beginning
  138. Time estimates in software
  139. Marco Arment did something awesome
  140. The case for worrying about AI-specific cognitive debt
  141. Why aren't we fine-tuning more?
  142. A theory of LLM output and negativity
  143. A catch-all post (and: why have catch-all posts?)
  144. A straightforward AI optimization
  145. On finding pure wins
  146. Fix it how many times?
  147. More on cognitive debt and AI
  148. Reading notes: 'The Unexpected Professor'
  149. Observability first
  150. YAGNI in 2026
  151. When the AI is usually good enough
  152. Data modeling and organizational dynamics
  153. Notes on blogging 100 days in a row
  154. Get the data model right
  155. What software knowledge will stay relevant?
  156. Catch-all post
  157. False alternatives and the economics of AI
  158. A model of how simplicity gets rewarded
  159. On rewarding simplicity
  160. Codex, Poincare, and living through the early days
  161. Terence Tao on doing math with AI
  162. Amusing mistakes and what they teach us
  163. A correction about bloated context
  164. Generative AI tools really love fallbacks
  165. A first guide to building APIs with AI
  166. Reading notes: 'Open Socrates'
  167. How many windows will we have open?
  168. Migrations with AI, again
  169. The delegation problem
  170. The future of migrations
  171. Reading notes: 'On the Calculation of Volume,' vol. 1
  172. Accountability and AI
  173. Catch-all post
  174. Notes about this blog
  175. On using Jules and making my own interface to it
  176. How should less-technical people get started with agentic AI tools?
  177. More experiments in monitoring Claude
  178. On cognitive debt
  179. On watching code fly by
  180. What might an AI-first recipe site look like?
  181. New technology in programming and poker
  182. Link-checking with generative AI
  183. Thinking about context
  184. On making one's own environment
  185. Coverage tooling for AI
  186. Reflections on keeping a top-books list
  187. Humane, adaptive AI bootstrapping
  188. Beware fake code
  189. Claude Code's /insights
  190. Scripting, testing, and dry runs
  191. Is coding getting much more empirical?
  192. Initial reading notes: 'Agentic Design Patterns'
  193. Human personality and generative AI
  194. Glassman on hockey and process
  195. The future of 10x engineering
  196. Setting up a Claude-specific AWS profile
  197. Notes on using generative AI securely
  198. Learning math with generative AI
  199. Generative AI and the texture of life
  200. Don't sleep on Codex
  201. The dissertation benchmark
  202. Hofstadter's Law, but for generative AI
  203. Notes on measuring child care time
  204. Notes on burnout
  205. More on MCP in 2026
  206. Reading notes: 'Impossible Creatures'
  207. The 'hey, this seems right' post
  208. MCP? In 2026?
  209. On vibecoding a reading-management webapp
  210. On getting better every day
  211. Reading notes: 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'
  212. The new cost of coffee
  213. The new intellectual athletes
  214. Notes on integration testing
  215. On the environmental costs of generative AI
  216. You can just try harder
  217. Making the Cate Hall Machine
  218. On (not) using Django in 2026
  219. Don't confuse total and marginal correctness rates
  220. 22 reasons I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025
  221. Matt Glassman is Bear-blogging
  222. On messy jobs
  223. Getting metrics by logging
  224. Software I'm using and how I'm using it
  225. I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025
  226. Jonathan Franzen on writing sequentially

2025 44

  1. On boiling water
  2. Productivity systems and perverse incentives
  3. On designing software you aren't working on
  4. My favorite TV of 2025
  5. Databases make good databases, again
  6. Making a book queue
  7. Helix, two months later
  8. My Advent of blogging
  9. On zero outputs
  10. Against SemVer
  11. Kitchen optimizations
  12. Frequent corrections I make to LLM code
  13. Why use a generative AI browser?
  14. On improving at LearnedLeague
  15. How much data do you really have?
  16. Matthew Hawthorne on tradeoffs
  17. Databases make good databases
  18. What follows from Gall's Law?
  19. What happened to Quantified Self?
  20. Dutch fiction
  21. Front-end maximalism: objections and replies
  22. Scaling down
  23. Software, philosophy, and skepticism
  24. Error-handling and locality
  25. Common errors in flashcard set composition
  26. A conjecture about communication in software systems
  27. Ingestion
  28. Reading notes: 'Cruciverbalism'
  29. Common errors in flashcard composition
  30. The long run comes quickly
  31. Reading notes: 'Making a Point'
  32. Notes on optional booleans
  33. On responding to email quickly
  34. Beard's Law
  35. On having a data object
  36. Notes on buying a basic laptop
  37. Front-end maximalism
  38. The Helix text editor
  39. TJ Fisher: good on the buzzer
  40. Game theory and the willingness to look bad
  41. Hello
  42. On naming variables
  43. Notes on spaced repetition scheduling
  44. Ancient philosophy and software

2024 2

  1. How to ramp up
  2. Why use spaced repetition?

2023 14

  1. Reading notes: There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather
  2. Andrew Brokos on a poker hypothetical
  3. Bill Deresiewicz on art
  4. Notes on Cole South's notes about software
  5. Paul Graham, ambition, and creativity
  6. Movie notes: 'The Help'
  7. A note on 10x engineering
  8. Testing decorated functions in Python web frameworks
  9. A quick argument for naming all software prototypes after birds
  10. Reading notes: Get Ready
  11. Reading notes: My Losing Season
  12. On middlebrow books
  13. On improving data-adjacent code
  14. On Anki's database

2022 48

  1. Reading notes: The Last Days of Roger Federer
  2. On ranking things
  3. Viewquake: making meaning after the fact
  4. Reading notes: Crossroads
  5. Notes on Tyler Cowen on relearning the Internet
  6. Notes on being the Day One chipleader
  7. Code correctly by conforming to the real world
  8. An argument from Jimmy Koppel
  9. What is America's epic?
  10. Why events?
  11. Reading notes: Of Boys and Men
  12. On the scarcity of context
  13. Code review reference
  14. Why my priors about cheating at poker are so high
  15. Reading notes: The Baseball 100
  16. On stop-losses
  17. Reading notes: The End of Solitude
  18. A Shapley example
  19. 15 claims about software testing
  20. Why don't people talk about the Shapley value more?
  21. On poker's comparative advantage
  22. On studying for your upcoming job: objections and replies
  23. A common trap for people entering programming jobs
  24. Reading notes: A Widow for One Year
  25. On having philosophy in your life
  26. Viewquake: interpreting obvious mistakes
  27. On poker's comparative disadvantage
  28. Listening notes: 'The Pragmatic Programmer'
  29. Reading notes: Talent
  30. Viewquake: Decisionmaking is overrated
  31. On viewquakes
  32. On winning auctions
  33. On actually reading the book
  34. The 100 books nearest to my heart
  35. On preparing for coding interviews
  36. Reading notes: 'The Manager's Path'
  37. Books I like more than other people do
  38. On quadratic complexity
  39. Reading notes: The Score Takes Care of Itself
  40. On scarcity and regionality
  41. On distributing reading time
  42. On parenting
  43. On productivity
  44. Reading notes: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
  45. On talking to think better
  46. 12 rules for living
  47. Reading notes: The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles
  48. On recovering

2021 4

  1. On Conversations with Tyler
  2. Reading notes: A Philosophy of Software Design
  3. Reading notes: How to Change
  4. The ideal of the open mind

2020 3

  1. On reading The Diff
  2. On dependencies
  3. Reading notes: 'What You Do Is Who You Are'

2019 3

  1. In memoriam: Frances Alvin
  2. On long books
  3. Podcasting FAQ

2018 1

  1. How academics can find non-academic work

2016 1

  1. On solving the wrong problem

2015 1

  1. The lawnmower essay and the problems of philosophy

2011 1

  1. Trip report: 2011 World Series of Poker

Undated 139

  1. #potofhoney
  2. #AI for the sake of AI
  3. #API design
  4. #APIs
  5. #AWS
  6. #Cate Hall
  7. #Claude
  8. #Codex
  9. #Django
  10. #Gall's Law
  11. #Google
  12. #I was wrong
  13. #Jev
  14. #Jules
  15. #LearnedLeague
  16. #Matt Glassman
  17. #Python
  18. #Shakespeare
  19. #Simon Willison
  20. #The Cate Hall Machine
  21. #Tyler Cowen
  22. #academia
  23. #accessibility
  24. #agency
  25. #agentic computing
  26. #algorithms
  27. #app development
  28. #archives
  29. #art
  30. #best of
  31. #books
  32. #bootstrapping
  33. #bug blindness
  34. #cards
  35. #catch-all
  36. #children's literature
  37. #coding as a quasi-athletic endeavor
  38. #cognitive debt
  39. #commentary
  40. #communication
  41. #conjectures
  42. #context
  43. #contrarian views
  44. #corrections
  45. #counterexamples to Betteridge's law of headlines
  46. #creativity
  47. #cultural criticism
  48. #culture
  49. #culture of software
  50. #doing the homework
  51. #economics
  52. #economics of labor
  53. #encapsulation
  54. #epistemology
  55. #estimation
  56. #experiments
  57. #feelings
  58. #flashcards
  59. #front-end engineering
  60. #front-end maximalism
  61. #future of work
  62. #generative AI
  63. #going analog
  64. #griping
  65. #humor
  66. #in memoriam
  67. #ingestion
  68. #intellectual life
  69. #kitchen optimizations
  70. #learning
  71. #lifestyle
  72. #listening notes
  73. #lists
  74. #math
  75. #measurement
  76. #media
  77. #meta
  78. #metaphysics
  79. #metarationality
  80. #middle age
  81. #migrations
  82. #mistakes
  83. #models
  84. #movies
  85. #nostalgia
  86. #note-taking
  87. #nuts and bolts
  88. #observability
  89. #parenthood
  90. #parenting
  91. #performance
  92. #personal
  93. #philosophy
  94. #poker
  95. #politics
  96. #productivity
  97. #professional
  98. #programming mindset
  99. #projects
  100. #psychology
  101. #psychology of coding
  102. #psychology of software
  103. #quizzing
  104. #rationality
  105. #reading
  106. #reading notes
  107. #refactoring
  108. #reviews
  109. #rule of three
  110. #science
  111. #screen time
  112. #security
  113. #self-experimentation
  114. #signaling
  115. #social media
  116. #sociology of software
  117. #software
  118. #software engineering
  119. #spaced repetition
  120. #speculative
  121. #sports
  122. #startups
  123. #stuff I made
  124. #system design
  125. #testing
  126. #the '90s
  127. #the future of work
  128. #the sociology of software
  129. #things that make me feel old
  130. #things that make me sad
  131. #this seems obvious to me but I don't see other people saying it
  132. #tools
  133. #trip report
  134. #trivia
  135. #user experience
  136. #vibecoding
  137. #whimsy
  138. #writing
  139. #you can just do things