Niko Barli

Wrote up some thoughts on Anthropic's Project Glassing, where their latest Opus-beating model is available to partnered security research organizations only Given recent alarm bells raised by credible security voices I think this is a justified decision simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/7/pro…

When we were deciding between joining @AnthropicAI or continuing to build independently at @Vercept_ai , we wrote down the pros and cons. One con everyone kept raising: acquisitions slow you down. You get dragged into bureaucracy. There's no way you ship as fast. It's been less than four weeks since we joined, and with the team here behind us and joining forces, we just shipped our first product launch. That speed comes down to the culture here. Everyone moves fast, everyone is incredibly smart, humble and supportive, and it's really easy to get things done. I'm very bullish on this: Anthropic's moat is its people. Starting today, Cowork now supports full computer use, and Dispatch lets you control your machine remotely from anywhere. Four weeks down, many more to come. We're just getting warmed up. 🔥

Data from @Pragmatic_Eng shows that Cursor is on track to overtake GitHub Copilot in usage if they continue this growth. Claude Code already did this - in just 8 months (!!), growing faster than anything before More data: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-tooling-2…

when the whole team is on claude code

What Are Agent Skills Really About? How Do They Work? We made a video to explain it clearly.

𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜? We assume AI helps junior developers ramp up faster. Learn the codebase quicker, ship sooner, and close the skill gap with seniors. Anthropic just ran a randomized controlled trial that challenges this. 52 developers learned a new Python library for async programming, half with AI assistance, half without. The AI group scored 𝟭𝟳% 𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 on comprehension tests. That's nearly two letter grades (50% vs 67%, p=0.01). The largest gap? 𝗗𝗲𝗯𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴, the exact skill juniors need to catch errors in AI-generated code. AI didn't even make them faster. The AI group finished about two minutes earlier, but this wasn't statistically significant. Some participants spent up to 30% of their time just writing prompts. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 The study identified six interaction patterns. Three scored below 40%, three scored above 65%. Low scorers: → Delegated everything to AI → Started manually, then progressively offloaded work → Used AI as a debugging crutch without building understanding High scorers: → Generated code, then asked follow-up questions → Requested explanations alongside code → Asked conceptual questions, coded independently Same tool, but different outcomes. This implies that unrestricted AI access during onboarding creates a capability gap. We get faster task completion today, but we lose the debugging instincts needed to validate AI output tomorrow. Think about it before you onboard new junior developers. Image: Anthropic.

New art project. Train and inference GPT in 243 lines of pure, dependency-free Python. This is the *full* algorithmic content of what is needed. Everything else is just for efficiency. I cannot simplify this any further. gist.github.com/karpathy/8627f…

A headline from 1953. More rare photos: bit.ly/3vlLOd6

I'm Boris and I created Claude Code. I wanted to quickly share a few tips for using Claude Code, sourced directly from the Claude Code team. The way the team uses Claude is different than how I use it. Remember: there is no one right way to use Claude Code -- everyones' setup is different. You should experiment to see what works for you!

I’m joining a standup. My manager asks me for my task status. I reply, “I’m still Canoodling… Give me a couple more days and I’ll be Bamboozling… it. I just hope I won’t be Whobbling…” Everyone went silent for 2 minutes. I was asked not to join standup anymore.

AI workflows are technically impressive, but there’s a deeper reason people are really amped about AI agents. This isn’t just new tech, it’s new psychology. Until now, very few people have known what it feels like to delegate to total competency. If you manage great people, or lead great teams, you know how it feels to put someone in charge who will get it done, get it done right, and get it done without drama. That kind of delegation is pure joy. Delegating to competency lets you forget about it completely. That’s real leverage. And now anyone can experience that. Everyone can feel it. And it feels fucking great. That’s a big reason why the excitement is real, and fully justified.

Haneda's flight paths today might be the most beautiful in the world. Timelapse proof... those perfect lines and curves. Stunning. what's your #1 airport for visual patterns?

AI makes senior architects more productive and reduces the need for junior engineers. The architect needs to understand the requirements as well as the technology stack well, to be able to guide the AI and fine tune its output. But if we don't have junior engineers, we don't get to train the next generation of architects - after all how does someone become a software architect without being a junior engineer first? I am still thinking through how this gets resolved.

【訃報】プログラミング言語「Pascal」の開発者ニクラウス・ヴィルト氏が89歳で死去、ソフトウェア設計のパイオニアとして複数のプログラミング言語を考案し1984年にチューリング賞を受賞(2024) gigazine.net/news/20240105-…

How a book written in 1910 could teach you calculus better than several books of today [Full text: calculusmadeeasy.org]

【お知らせ】 2026年1月19日、KADOKAWAより『絶対解きたくなる！ 考えるのが楽しくてとまらない算数』を出版します。 単著としては2冊目、初の一般向けの本です。 長年、自分のクラスの子ども達以外にも算数の面白さを届けたいと思っていたので、とても嬉しく思っています。 内容は、私が実際にクラスで行った授業をベースに、先生と子どものキャラクターがやりとりしながら問題を解き進めていく形式です。ただ問題が並んでいるだけの本ではありません。 子どもはもちろん、算数から離れて久しい大人の方にも楽しんでいただける内容になっています。 本日よりAmazonで予約開始しています。