Look at this bit of CSS. For greatest effect, imagine sending it yourself from ten or fifteen years ago, or the first time you hit upon a limitation in browser compatibility or looked at someone else’s stylesheet and wondered “what the heck is going on here and what’s a high-pass filter?” Marvel at all the things that are just there, no hacks or preprocessors or compilers required. Gradients, animations, input states. CSS has grown into the open-ended, declarative, and compatible syst...| Adam Keys is Thinking
In that order, every time. I make a big deal about working downhill. Get stuff done, slice it smaller, get feedback, go again, remove friction, a little faster this time. But let me tell you, none of that matters if it doesn’t come together and feel great once it’s all assembled in front of you. When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it.| therealadam.com
When leading projects, in any capacity, avoid startling your colleagues. Tech leads, engineering managers, product managers, etc. need to keep peers and stakeholders informed. When there are successes, let them know. When risks are discovered, communicate the steps taken to mitigate them. When setbacks occur, indicate how it will affect the remaining scope and schedule of the project. Dig out, not up. Stakeholders and peers are startled when they think a project is smooth sailing only to hear...| therealadam.com
So you messed up. Now what? Late projects stay late. It’s terrifically rare to “catch up” on a late project. When projects run late, it’s because you’ve missed something in your original estimate: you’ve guessed that work will take x days, but it’s taking 1.5x, or whatever. For you to “catch up”, your estimate would have to be wrong about the rest of the project, but in the opposite direction.| therealadam.com
The last 10% of any creative act is the hard part. (Previously: Finishing is a skill.) You had an idea, thought it would take X days, only to find X-1 days of all these other things that have to be done. That’s functional scope creep. Finishing, actually getting the draft or project out of your computer and out into the world, that’s a whole other list of things. Lots of work, and surprises, are lurking here. Call it delivery scope creep. Or a finishing tax. And, it’s a mental challenge...| Adam Keys is Thinking
The winning scenario for agent-assisted code, design, science, etc. is humans having more time to do creative and impactful thinking because computers/LLMs do the tedious setup, easily verified work, and gather preliminary materials that humans turn into inventions. FWIW, I don’t think the worst scenarios are likely. The future isn’t atrophying literacy rates or people turning off their brains to tell LLMs what to do. It’s probably not Malthusian job scarcity or Keynesian leisure abunda...| Adam Keys is Thinking
Over the course of two experiments within two half-day coding sessions, I better glimpsed what working with coding agents might look like over the next couple of years. 1. I teach the agent to build a simple Rails CMS This is pretty unremarkable, given my experience. But, like so many lately, I wanted more reps at exploring agent coding workflows. In particular: what works for guiding an agent and keeping it on-track? I did a bit of the upfront setup with wits alone. Executing the correct boi...| Adam Keys is Thinking
A few reflections on what I’ve been building (with) lately: llm is great for prototyping many kinds of workflows. If you’re thinking “I’d like to build an app with some intelligence” and “I don’t mind tinkering with CLI apps”, give it a go. In particular, templates and fragments are very useful for assembling the rudiments of problem solution. Part and parcel with using llm, I’m tinkering with locally runnable models via Ollama. On my M3 MacBook Pro with 24 GB of total memor...| Adam Keys is Thinking
AKA “Help! I estimated a project and hit every branch falling down the surprises tree.” A shocking turn of events that definitely has never happened to any of us. Don’t worry too hard when it turns out estimates weren’t accurate. They were optimistic guesses based on incomplete information and optimism that everything would go right—which it rarely does. Do communicate to your stakeholders. Tell people whose work depends on your project about delays as soon as you know.| therealadam.com
I like the idea of practicing1, in the musical or athletic sense, at professional skills to rapidly improve my performance and reduce my error rate. When I was a music major2, I spent hours practicing ahead of rehearsals, lessons, and performance. Until recently, I was unable to conceive of how I might do the same for leadership.| therealadam.com
