News
Starting is free now, so I start everything and finish nothing. On the compulsion loop of agentic coding — and why stopping and resuming are _the_ skills to play with now.
Paper Jams
We'll be meeting for Paper Jam #19 on Friday, July 17 at 1pm UTC. We'll be discussing: Charles I. Jones AI and Our Economic Future (2026) [link] This one is a departure proposed by a member of Paper Jams. Our papers so far have come from
Wasn't AI supposed to make software development easier? Yes: with the right guardrails and practices, routine programming tasks can now be handed off to an LLM. And no: something else is happening at the same time. I've heard from a few developers now that the work
I love working on meaningful things with others. It's how I feel connected with the rest of humanity. And it's when looking beyond my immediate community or organization that I tend to find the most surprising or interesting connections. When I was still in academia, it
Software developers use computers not only for writing programs — they also use them to communicate and collaborate with one another. Software development is very much a social activity: collaboration and communication activities can have a powerful impact on the success of software projects. Computer-support for these activities is not
When you build software, sooner or later you will want to think about human behavior — most notably about what motivates humans. I don’t mean Skinner boxes, points and ladders, variable reward schedules and the like as you might find them in “free to play but we have an in-
If you build software products, chances are that you’ve worried about adoption before. Will anyone use what I’ve built? How can I get more people to use it? And why do people leave after a few days? Many people have written about this problem, and there are indeed
Developers use many, many tools to collaborate. Those tools solve problems, but also create new challenges: distractions impede productivity, developers struggle to keep up with everything, or partially adopted tools — those are just a few examples. But how can we tackle those problems? In this post, I share six recommendations
Software developers use many tools to support their work. They coordinate with their teams on code hosting sites, interface with non-developers in project management apps, use microblogs to network, and learn through Q&A sites and podcasts. They do derive value from those tools — but what problems and
On the Experience of Making Software.
Wasn't AI supposed to make software development easier? Yes: with the right guardrails and practices, routine programming tasks can now be handed off to an LLM. And no: something else is happening at the same time. I've heard from a few developers now that the work
We'll be meeting for Paper Jam #15 on Friday, March 27 at 2pm UTC. This month we're looking at the following paper: Judy Hanwen Shen, Alex Tamkin How AI Impacts Skill Formation (2026) [link] This paper reports on a between-subjects randomized experiment that investigates how
Do large language models trained on human data respond to the same psychological levers that sway us? Once a month, I meet with subscribers to my site's Paper Jam plan to discuss a paper about The Experience of Making Software. This post reports on Paper Jam #10. Thank
What factors make developers working in teams thrive? Context: once a month, I meet with subscribers to the Paper Jam plan of my blog to discuss a paper at the intersection of topics such as computer-supported collaborative work, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and psychology. This post reports on
How do identity, content, and interaction transparency affect online interactions and collaboration? Context: once a month, I meet with subscribers to the Paper Jam plan of my blog to discuss a paper at the intersection of topics such as computer-supported collaborative work, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and psychology.
I love working on meaningful things with others. It's how I feel connected with the rest of humanity. And it's when looking beyond my immediate community or organization that I tend to find the most surprising or interesting connections. When I was still in academia, it
Software developers use computers not only for writing programs — they also use them to communicate and collaborate with one another. Software development is very much a social activity: collaboration and communication activities can have a powerful impact on the success of software projects. Computer-support for these activities is not
When you build software, sooner or later you will want to think about human behavior — most notably about what motivates humans. I don’t mean Skinner boxes, points and ladders, variable reward schedules and the like as you might find them in “free to play but we have an in-
If you build software products, chances are that you’ve worried about adoption before. Will anyone use what I’ve built? How can I get more people to use it? And why do people leave after a few days? Many people have written about this problem, and there are indeed
Developers use many, many tools to collaborate. Those tools solve problems, but also create new challenges: distractions impede productivity, developers struggle to keep up with everything, or partially adopted tools — those are just a few examples. But how can we tackle those problems? In this post, I share six recommendations
Software developers use many tools to support their work. They coordinate with their teams on code hosting sites, interface with non-developers in project management apps, use microblogs to network, and learn through Q&A sites and podcasts. They do derive value from those tools — but what problems and
Studies have shown that about 30% to 50% of what we do in a day can be called habitual [1]. However, adopting new habits is hard: at least I have always struggled with making things stick. But now I think I’ve found something that works for me. It’s
