Justin Searls

New episode of Breaking Change is live! Pod Freeze justin.searls.co/casts/breaking…

Update on using MacBook Neo for dev tasks: this is definitely a device you should to reboot daily, even without Chrome or any Electron apps. This morning, Zed (a native Rust app) was 500% CPU without a single window open, 3 macOS internal daemons had crashed, 800ms input lag.

Using MacBook Neo for "real" development work and it's simultaneously juggling: • Running Claude Code in three tabs at once • Compiling multi-package Xcode builds • Automating two iOS Simulators and a Mac build of my app Hasn't missed a beat. Not bad for a phone chip.

Claude sure goes down a lot for being a product targeting businesses. Maybe Anthropic is just doing humanity a solid by helping us understand how much it will suck when the era of subsidized pricing for LLM-based products ends.

Sent the DLSS 5 video to some not-very-online friends and they thought it looked incredible. Shame on them for not knowing that real gamers are supposed to be outraged! (I happen to think it looks slick as hell and am looking forward to using it.) youtu.be/4ZlwTtgbgVA

New episode of Merge Commits is live! freeCodeCamp: Which Devs Are Screwed? justin.searls.co/casts/merge-co…

We blew past this milestone without much fanfare, but it bears repeating: building awareness & goodwill by releasing open source no longer makes strategic sense for many companies. Agents increasingly consume & adapt OSS—often without users' knowledge—and cut out the creator.

Models are commodities, harnesses are differentiators justin.searls.co/links/2026-03-…

Marathon is the first PVP-heavy game to get its hooks in me since… Unreal Tournament in 2001? I fucking suck, but even playing solo it can feel incredible when you do manage to come out on top. If you want to roll with me, I'm Searls#2430 (or just email me justin@searls.co)

Dual-loop BDD is the new Red-green TDD justin.searls.co/posts/dual-loo…

Pro-tip to any devs who only discovered TDD thanks to coding agents: refactoring is inherently directional. It's more like prefactoring—you rearrange code to make the next change easy. That means you (and your agent) should know the next planned change before you refactor!

Red-green rally justin.searls.co/shots/2026-03-…

Claude's electron app for macOS is such a buggy mess that I've uninstalled it and sequestered it to a Safari tab, just like I did to Slack, Discord, etc., six years ago. ChatGPT is a native app where things like the stop button actually work (usually) tonsky.me/blog/fall-of-n…

I'll admit, it's hard not to get frustrated by all the posts about coding agents going viral lately that are saying the same shit I've been blogging and podcasting for multiple years at this point with little to no fanfare. blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/gri…

GPT 4.1? In 2026? Is the State Department on a budget? Is every diplomatic cable just going to have 300 space-delimited emdashes now? nextgov.com/acquisition/20…

Want to buy Becky's iPhone Air? I can vouch that it's in excellent condition (unlocked, $300 less than MSRP). Buy here on Swappa or send me your best offer justin@searls.co swappa.com/listing/view/L…

I need a new blog to subscribe to. Know any you think I'd like? E-mail me: justin@searls.co

Barely a month goes by where I can check the news without being reminded of the Cracked skit about two comedy writers who were hired to run a fake Donald Trump campaign and then accidentally got him elected youtu.be/8qIQbydyHwc?si…

Hotfix deployed! Len Testa joins for a Galactic Starcruiser tell-all: What was the Star Wars hotel actually like? Why did Disney's executives learn all the wrong lessons? What's Justin's hourly rate and does it include foot stuff? Listen and find out! justin.searls.co/casts/breaking…

For the extremely narrow Venn diagram of people who love both I Think You Should Leave and Disco Elysium, this is amazing youtu.be/6OKgdTXLWIg?si…