John Turner
@breaking.computer
Music, code, and cooking enthusiast. Staff engineer making developer tools at a reasonably well known tech company/podcast sponsor. Occasionally writes at breaking.computer
Well played
OpenCode Elixir
what should we call the higher tier of OpenCode Go?
September 19, 2026 at 6:05 PM
Well played
Most of my greenfield stuff starts with some version of doing C4 diagrams to solidify my mental model before ever touching a coding agent.
unironically? I'm getting so much value out of diagrams these days
UML's time has come!
September 18, 2026 at 2:01 AM
Most of my greenfield stuff starts with some version of doing C4 diagrams to solidify my mental model before ever touching a coding agent.
Increasingly I just don’t let LLMs write prose. I already had a rule that anything where my voice was meaningful—email, docs—would be completely written by me and possibly LLM edited, but increasingly that’s applying in more mechanical places like code comments.
Reading LLM text makes us worse writers
Originally at https://seanmonstar.com/micro/20260917-reading-llms-worsens-writing/
Originally at https://seanmonstar.com/micro/20260917-reading-llms-worsens-writing/
Reading LLM text makes us worse writers
The top advice given to anyone wanting to get better at writing, besides just writing, is to _read_ more. Especially good writing. Because we imitate that which we experience more of.
seanmonstar.com
September 18, 2026 at 1:52 AM
Increasingly I just don’t let LLMs write prose. I already had a rule that anything where my voice was meaningful—email, docs—would be completely written by me and possibly LLM edited, but increasingly that’s applying in more mechanical places like code comments.
Reposted by John Turner
i don't mind people using agents to create PRs, but please at least write the description and replies yourself 🙏
September 15, 2026 at 8:50 AM
i don't mind people using agents to create PRs, but please at least write the description and replies yourself 🙏
It’s true. As I told someone recently: much of the job is going around to different engineers and asking “how can I personally make your job easier and more pleasant?” There’s a lot to enjoy about that.
maybe this is a universal truth i’m only discovering now, but working on internal tools is way more fun than doing literally anything else
September 11, 2026 at 12:54 AM
It’s true. As I told someone recently: much of the job is going around to different engineers and asking “how can I personally make your job easier and more pleasant?” There’s a lot to enjoy about that.
Reposted by John Turner
attention Fastmail executive team: please continue to be normal. If you have any thoughts about anything other than emails, please keep them to yourselves. Please do not fund any external projects that have anything to do with anything other than emails. Thank you.
September 2, 2026 at 11:36 PM
attention Fastmail executive team: please continue to be normal. If you have any thoughts about anything other than emails, please keep them to yourselves. Please do not fund any external projects that have anything to do with anything other than emails. Thank you.
A certain subset of folks on this site are about to discover y’all’d’ve, and I‘m very excited for them.
August 29, 2026 at 4:00 AM
A certain subset of folks on this site are about to discover y’all’d’ve, and I‘m very excited for them.
I developed mild RSI in one of my hands as a jazz guitar major, so jazz RSI is definitely a thing.
jazz hands imply the existence of jazz wrists and unfortunately, jazz tendonitis
August 15, 2026 at 3:58 PM
I developed mild RSI in one of my hands as a jazz guitar major, so jazz RSI is definitely a thing.
I’m not averse to a good language debate, and I’m certainly not neutral, but I feel like a lot of the Go discourse is some form of “omg, I can’t believe Go lets you <thing that no one would ever actually do>”.
August 13, 2026 at 11:47 PM
I’m not averse to a good language debate, and I’m certainly not neutral, but I feel like a lot of the Go discourse is some form of “omg, I can’t believe Go lets you <thing that no one would ever actually do>”.
Reposted by John Turner
Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)
August 12, 2026 at 10:03 PM
Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)
I want these too, but I think an AI agent would be content with getting served a markdown file with curl commands to run.
If you're optimizing your site for AI, the AI wants:
- A fast Time to First Byte (200-500ms).
- Server-rendered HTML
- Lightweight markup
- A valid accessibility tree
- Layout stability
- Captions and alt text
- No stupid CAPTCHAs
Sound familiar? That's the same stuff that human users want too.
- A fast Time to First Byte (200-500ms).
- Server-rendered HTML
- Lightweight markup
- A valid accessibility tree
- Layout stability
- Captions and alt text
- No stupid CAPTCHAs
Sound familiar? That's the same stuff that human users want too.
August 13, 2026 at 12:53 AM
I want these too, but I think an AI agent would be content with getting served a markdown file with curl commands to run.
I used to mostly abide this, but the past few weeks PR stacks have muddled the picture a bit. It’s really easy to get Claude to orchestrate a large scale change, break that change up into PRs, and then stack them for easy linkage.
One commit per unit of "I would want to revert to this", one PR per unit of "this is a logical change someone should be able to review in one sitting"
long before AI, I always kinda didn't like the blanket rule of "many small PRs beats one big PR". it really depends what you're working on
I liked having _all_ the code to look at in one review personally rather than having to remember what we were doing 50 PRs ago. depends on the task at hand
I liked having _all_ the code to look at in one review personally rather than having to remember what we were doing 50 PRs ago. depends on the task at hand
August 12, 2026 at 12:18 AM
I used to mostly abide this, but the past few weeks PR stacks have muddled the picture a bit. It’s really easy to get Claude to orchestrate a large scale change, break that change up into PRs, and then stack them for easy linkage.
With LLMs becoming increasingly good at using repo information for research, knowing how to keep your commit history easy to read is an underrated skill.
typo in your last commit message? forgot to add a file? 😅 git commit --amend fixes the most recent commit without making a whole new one. just don't amend commits you've already pushed ☺️
August 12, 2026 at 12:12 AM
With LLMs becoming increasingly good at using repo information for research, knowing how to keep your commit history easy to read is an underrated skill.
Reposted by John Turner
github when I rebase my 28-tall PR stack
August 10, 2026 at 3:05 PM
github when I rebase my 28-tall PR stack
Certainly the most dangerous I’ve ever done. I missed a decimal point on an amplitude value on my C For Audio class’ “making a sine wave” assignment, which I was testing with earbuds. One of the more unpleasant experiences of my life.
The most dangerous area of Programming is Audio Programming. If you are not careful you can lose your ears.
August 9, 2026 at 3:40 AM
Certainly the most dangerous I’ve ever done. I missed a decimal point on an amplitude value on my C For Audio class’ “making a sine wave” assignment, which I was testing with earbuds. One of the more unpleasant experiences of my life.
Somewhat tangential to the point of the thread, but this is why I always push back on the idea of giving new grad and junior engineer candidates systems design interviews. There are other reasons too, but the likelihood that they would have studied or experienced it beyond interview prep is low.
knowing something means you've either experienced or studied something. I can write an HTML form from memory, but I can't invert a binary tree or write a sorting algorithm without looking it up (never needed it for real, never studied it)
has nothing to do with my value as a person (lil thread 👇)
has nothing to do with my value as a person (lil thread 👇)
comments on the new ep of The Full Stack are highlighting a Broken Human Brain Problem™:
if you know the answer, the question is obvious & too easy & everyone who doesn't know it is obviously an idiot
but if you *don't* know the answer, it's too niche & impossible & who would possibly know that?
if you know the answer, the question is obvious & too easy & everyone who doesn't know it is obviously an idiot
but if you *don't* know the answer, it's too niche & impossible & who would possibly know that?
August 8, 2026 at 12:02 AM
Somewhat tangential to the point of the thread, but this is why I always push back on the idea of giving new grad and junior engineer candidates systems design interviews. There are other reasons too, but the likelihood that they would have studied or experienced it beyond interview prep is low.
Reposted by John Turner
Sonic Pi v5 is released.
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
There's something to excite everyone - from the friendlier error messages, to the pro-audio config, to the new dynamic visuals for performance.
Enjoy!
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
There's something to excite everyone - from the friendlier error messages, to the pro-audio config, to the new dynamic visuals for performance.
Enjoy!
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
Sonic Pi v5 Released | Sam Aaron
Hi everyone, today is release day! Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun. Everything has been complete
www.patreon.com
August 7, 2026 at 7:24 AM
Sonic Pi v5 is released.
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
There's something to excite everyone - from the friendlier error messages, to the pro-audio config, to the new dynamic visuals for performance.
Enjoy!
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
Sonic Pi is now more friendly, more accessible, more powerful and more fun.
There's something to excite everyone - from the friendlier error messages, to the pro-audio config, to the new dynamic visuals for performance.
Enjoy!
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
Reposted by John Turner
Good news, everyone! We made it easy and free to convert your entire Airtable workspace to durable Markdown files that you own and can use offline.
Obsidian Bases supports all your views, filters, and formulas. Your data is yours, take ownership of it.
Obsidian Bases supports all your views, filters, and formulas. Your data is yours, take ownership of it.
August 5, 2026 at 8:59 PM
Good news, everyone! We made it easy and free to convert your entire Airtable workspace to durable Markdown files that you own and can use offline.
Obsidian Bases supports all your views, filters, and formulas. Your data is yours, take ownership of it.
Obsidian Bases supports all your views, filters, and formulas. Your data is yours, take ownership of it.
Reposted by John Turner
Oh, you wanna come over? Cool. Just give me three business days to clean my house until it looks like no one has ever lived here.
August 2, 2026 at 10:02 PM
Oh, you wanna come over? Cool. Just give me three business days to clean my house until it looks like no one has ever lived here.
This makes me curious if, at some point, the debate will be build vs buy vs customize instead of just the first two. That’s always been an option, but the carry cost of a fork has historically been high and tedious in many companies.
A surprising conclusion I have come to from working with agents. blog.exe.dev/devtools-mus...
Devtools must be open source - exe.dev blog
We have entered the age of personalized software.
blog.exe.dev
August 2, 2026 at 9:57 PM
This makes me curious if, at some point, the debate will be build vs buy vs customize instead of just the first two. That’s always been an option, but the carry cost of a fork has historically been high and tedious in many companies.
Power chords on bass don’t sound THAT bad. This is a bit mellow dramatic.
August 2, 2026 at 2:05 AM
Power chords on bass don’t sound THAT bad. This is a bit mellow dramatic.
I was very much on the “nurture“ side of the nature/nurture debate, and believed—quite erroneously, I came to find out—that parents who said things like “they were always like that” were underestimating their role in who their child became personality wise. My eldest disabused me of that one.
Hey parents of bsky:
What are some theories of parenting you were very confident in right up until you had your own kids?
What are some theories of parenting you were very confident in right up until you had your own kids?
July 28, 2026 at 1:36 AM
I was very much on the “nurture“ side of the nature/nurture debate, and believed—quite erroneously, I came to find out—that parents who said things like “they were always like that” were underestimating their role in who their child became personality wise. My eldest disabused me of that one.
Reposted by John Turner
hanging out with drunk SREs will make you think twice about the internet
People thinking "there's no way that OpenAI didn't detect their agent going rogue earlier" have no idea about the state of sausage making in your common tech company
simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/23/...
simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/23/...
The first known runaway AI agent—or a very bad marketing stunt?
Martin Alderson's commentary on the OpenAI accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face includes a couple of details I hadn't considered. First, Hugging Face offers a truly rich target if you're trying...
simonwillison.net
July 25, 2026 at 12:48 AM
hanging out with drunk SREs will make you think twice about the internet
I haven’t been professionally artistic in a while, so what do I know, but by the time you can use the word “inundated,” I think it’s time to just take the L and move on.
This is art, to me.
July 20, 2026 at 5:10 PM
I haven’t been professionally artistic in a while, so what do I know, but by the time you can use the word “inundated,” I think it’s time to just take the L and move on.
Reposted by John Turner
It took 7 years of self-funded work, but Sonic Pi is finally at a place I'm happy with.
It's even easier than beginners and even more powerful for pro users - and just way more polished in every way.
It's also a (friendly) technical trojan horse for SuperSonic.
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
It's even easier than beginners and even more powerful for pro users - and just way more polished in every way.
It's also a (friendly) technical trojan horse for SuperSonic.
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
Sonic Pi v5 Release Candidate 1 | Sam Aaron
Hey there, happy Friday and huge love to you wherever you are in the world. Today, it's time to open the vaults and let loose something that
www.patreon.com
July 18, 2026 at 10:22 AM
It took 7 years of self-funded work, but Sonic Pi is finally at a place I'm happy with.
It's even easier than beginners and even more powerful for pro users - and just way more polished in every way.
It's also a (friendly) technical trojan horse for SuperSonic.
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...
It's even easier than beginners and even more powerful for pro users - and just way more polished in every way.
It's also a (friendly) technical trojan horse for SuperSonic.
www.patreon.com/samaaron/pos...