Andrew Timberlake

New blog post: Shorthand, the library I’ve used in every Elixir project for six years but never promoted—until now andrewtimberlake.com/blog/2024/11/s… #MyElixirStatus

@arvidkahl I wonder about that. So far none of my kids is likely to follow in my footsteps. The 11 yr old might. Time will tell

I just realized that we are probably in the decade when the first meaningful number of long-term SaaS founders will turn their profitable businesses over to their children. It's pretty weird to think of SaaS as a family business. I have no trouble thinking about a plumbing or roofing business handed down from parent to child, but with a software company? Feels kind of odd.

@EOEboh In the first you likely have two distinct controllers. One handling index and one handling show of an individual item In the second you have one controller handling both Separation of concerns

Explain the difference between: GET /products/99 GET /products?id=99 Same result. Different meaning Why does the distinction matter?

The simple things we know that so many don’t. Just helped someone today to break up the double "s" in their gmail address by using "." johnssmith@ can be john.s.smith@

@gabriel__xyz Focus on being a dad and put in enough to keep the projects simmering. Once you get into the dad groove you’ll find the time again.

Dadpreneurs! How do you do it!??? As a new dad, im in the newborn trenches tbh feel like a walking zombie and i literally dont have time to work on my projects. What does/did your schedule look like in those first few months?? Any advice would be awesome! You guys are amazing

@SimonHoiberg I don’t want to really become poor when $20/m becomes $hundreds/m

People laugh at you for setting up your own Postgres instead of paying $20/mo for Supabase. They say you're thinking "poor." But this isn't really a poor vs abundance mindset. It's a slave vs sovereignty mindset.

Gotta love it when AI gives up and says "the tests keep failing because the thing you asked me to do didn’t quite work"

I remember the time when you could keep all HTTP headers, HTML tags, and CSS rules in your head

So true

@DmytroKrasun Good observation. It seems its completely counter to basic human nature though, unfortunately 😢

Most humans just want a hug, appreciation of their work and to be noticed sometimes. All this ragebait, negativity, and cynicism come from not getting that. So… I don’t know. Maybe we should like more posts, give more feedback, compliments. Hug more. Love more. Listen more.

@asmartbear I’m not sure you can define better. But you’ll need both whether you learn one or combine with a partner

Is it better to be an engineer and learn marketing, or be a marketer and learn to code? Is it better to be either and find a co-founder who is the other? Or is the grass always greener, so any path to “both” is a fine one?

@marclou I’m sure it will. Enjoy the break

I overworked myself. For the past 5 years, I barely took a day off. I shipped 30 startups, wrote 30,000 tweets, made 70 YouTube videos, and answered thousands of support requests. The weird part is, it never felt like work. It felt like play. Until recently. For the first time in years, I’ve struggled to get things done. I don’t want to open my laptop. The things that used to make me happy suddenly feel heavy. That scares me a bit, because the playful side of work is what got me here. And right now, it feels like I lost it. So I’m taking a break. I’ll still do about an hour of maintenance work a day, but the rest of my time will go to real life. I’m training for Hyrox in Korea on May 25, so I’ll put my energy there for now and train 20 hours a week. I went through a little burnout once before, in 2021. What helped me was going back to basics: training, reading, eating well, and sleeping 8 hours. It brought the hunger back then. I trust it will again!

I’m generally pretty allergic to ads. But, when I’m intrigued by one and click a link, and all I get is a sign up page with no information about what the service does…

@MbarkCherguia A bookshelf

What would you put in this space?

@PcPhilanthropy I’m old enough that I completely bypassed XP. Moved from Windows to Linux before XP

You’re old but are you Windows XP old? 🧐

@justbyte_ Such a great visual representation

2 software developers working on the same branch

@dhh Just because everyone else is doing it is never the right reason to do it too

This is why Jason and I have worked so well together for 25 years. Independently of each other, we both responded to a listener suggestion for a more WOW FACE YouTube thumbnail for the REWORK podcast. Hit sent at the same minute 😄

This is quite fascinating.

@SimonHoiberg There’s a lot of risk wrapped up in "just"

"Just use Vercel." "Just use Supabase." "Just use Clerk." Cool. Now your auth, database, and deployment are owned by 3 different companies who can change pricing whenever they want. And the rest of your product is wrapping OpenAI. At some point you have to ask yourself: what do I actually own here?

Email address obfuscation: What works in 2026? spencermortensen.com/articles/email…