Amelia Wattenberger 🪷

@bentossell I promise to follow it up with many bad posts to even it out

@Wattenberger should be banned for how good this is

wrote a few thoughts about what we lose now that we don't write the code ourselves, and do we get our flow back

@redblobgames the people demand a sequel

@Wattenberger Woah, I didn't realize. Also: a psychic massage therapist?!

TIL Marshall's book was actually The Medium is the Massage because a typesetter error that he liked so much he kept it

yes! imo there have to be ways of thinking about the aspects of code that aren't inherently visual - natural language works well for abstract concepts. summaries, thinking about thinks from different perspectives, short summaries - architecture diagrams, state machines, etc. codebases I'm familiar with have a shape in my head, it's one of my personal holy grails to figure out how to automate/extract something that feels good - esp interesting are things that are dynamic and simulate states/behavior over time. previously unthinkable to use as a working surface, how has the equation changed?

@Wattenberger so good! and i totally see how this works incredibly well for ui + visually oriented surfaces. curious how you think this'd translate to backend code which tends to be less scannable and parametric? maybe closer to specs-as-code like your work on @augmentcode ?

@willium ♥️

just so so good

totally agree that we're partially held back by our familiarity with our old ways! and I think there are new workflows that currently work, and it'll be really amazing once we can develop ergonomic ways of working in them. even when I'm not writing or reading the code, I need handholds and affordances to feel in control of the thing I'm making. Text is great but often feels like wearing oven mits.

Really interesting article. I'm wondering if this is just a problem that only we feel right now - as developers who know what the "old" way of coding feels like. The next generation of software developers never even experienced creating a mental model of your application - so I'm wondering if they still feel some sort of disconnect from the codebase at some point or if this just becomes "normal"

interestingly, I find myself reaching for this way of engaging with longer text more and more. not as a replacement for reading, but when I have 10 newsletters stacked up and not enough time, it helps scan them and find the threads I want to spend more time with

@drgdfyi ah gotcha! ty ❤️

@Wattenberger Please don’t take it the wrong way, I meant that it’s impressive Digging the drawings l

@chriskingnet 100%!

@Wattenberger I like your take (also, neat presentation!) Each era has enabled us to do more with less and push the boundaries of what's possible further. We haven't simply continued to build in the same way as before but quicker. Now we need to push again, and invent the tools to do so.

@kcheungio totally feel this! what I keep thinking is that we need to set our sights higher. what can we build now, with these tools at our disposal? like, our capabilities changed but our expectations haven't yet

@drgdfyi actually seriously with my own fingers

@Wattenberger “Wrote” Bruh

@Mappletons agree! every time I revisit Midjourney, I feel like they've gotten better at consistency. I used a single generated image as an "omni reference", and it did a pretty good job. I also did some post-processing in Figma to normalize/cut things out and get the right tone

@Wattenberger Aaaaahhh I love this. The bee swarm example is simple but good. How did you make the blue sketch style? Works really well - I assume generated with tight prompts?

yes totally feel that! I'm bullish on believing that there are ways to understand and interact with code at a higher level than the syntax. things like architecture diagrams, state machines, maybe even wiki-like things apply. and actually the inherently visual nature of ui stuff makes it harder to think of the other ways that are still helpful for visual stuff.

@Wattenberger I believe the same re: alt interfaces to code, but I debate this theory with people a lot, and the backend/infra ppl are less sold on interactive views and on-the-fly UI. Natural fit for front-end and design, but maybe less for other types of eng. e.g. too complex to visualise

@maxbittker Totally. We first need to change how we think and collaborate

My hunch is that these get solved at the emotional and social layer first Mindset, language and heuristics are all wide open for rethinking and debugging. New tools are downstream from that

Amelia raises three concerns with agents: Losing touch with your codebase Losing touch with your product intuitions Losing touch with your teammates.

@pianostring4tet 🙌 would love any thoughts

@Wattenberger loving this essay

@juvoni It is truly so bad at things like this. We need better tools!

This is the future of technical/narrative essays! Incredible work and storytelling by Amelia. When I think of what AI can't replace it's this level of quality.

come on by wattenberger.com/thoughts/code-…

@JaviGala oh no! I think it's back now? aidesignfieldguide.com/articles/ameli…

@Wattenberger Hi @Wattenberger , I tried to access this article today but got a "Not found" error, is there any other way to access it? Started reading it when it was published but wanted to read it more carefully now. Thanks!

it was lovely chatting with Ryan and team, really interesting to see how my thoughts have changed (and not changed) over the last year!

@JnBrymn exploration is way more fun now!

@Wattenberger Waaaaay on back, I was really into D3 at one point. I built physics simulations in it. Heck, I build the asteroids in D3 :P But my career took a turn toward a less visually engaging medium! Maybe I'll play w/ it again, now since agents can do anything :P

I'm tired, fam

@JnBrymn for generic charts, there's probably a good lib! I think d3 is the right set of utilities to do things flexibly, esp in combination with coding agents

@Wattenberger What's the thing to use these days for animated web UIs? Still D3? Something else taken the title these days?