Dave Marshall

Ten years ago today I responded to this forum post on acorndomains.co.uk, asking for help building @childcare. I was already in a full time job, but I spoke to the founder and took the work on in my spare time, a few hours per week.

🔥 IT'S GAME DAY! The biggest day in the club’s history has arrived. This afternoon the Vikings travel to the Halliwell Jones Stadium to take on one of Super League’s big guns in the Betfred Challenge Cup! From a brand new club…to one of the biggest stages in rugby league. Whatever happens today, the lads will run out representing our town, our supporters and everyone who has helped build this club from day one. Let’s go. ⚔️ #UTV 🔴⚫

In 2026, claude code has co-authored 73% of my changesets, but 94% of the overall all the lines I've changed. Presumably I'm putting in surgical fixes after all the heavy lifting is done.

@wainysweak my agents weren't working and it almost had to be thing. Decided to go for a walk instead. Work can wait.

@davedevelopment is that still a thing

I really can't be bothered to actually write the code myself.

how to build a bootstrapped startup without funding: 1. pick a problem you personally have. if you don't use your own product daily, quit now 2. skip the pitch deck. open your code editor. ship something ugly in a weekend 3. charge money from day 1. free users give you nothing but support tickets 4. use boring tech. PHP, SQLite, vanilla JS. frameworks are a trap that mass waste your time 5. host on cheap VPS ($5-20/mo). not AWS. you don't need kubernetes for 1,000 users 6. do customer support yourself. it's the fastest product feedback loop that exists 7. automate everything you do more than twice. cron jobs > employees. 8. grow on Twitter/X by building in public. your journey IS the marketing 9. keep your burn rate near zero so you never need to raise. ramen profitable > series A 10. say no to investors, cofounders, and "advisors" who want equity for intros i've been doing this for 10+ years now. no employees, no funding, no board meetings the entire VC game is designed to make you think you need permission to start you don't

I have only recently watched the Lonesome Dove mini-series for the first time, what a performance from this man 👌

80” - TRY!!!!! TUOHEY! ABSOLUTE SCENES! The Vikings have won it on the hooter!!! Miller goes close, held up at the line. The resulting play sees the visitors shift it right in the hope something can happen - Tuohey steps off his right foot and frantically scurries home to touch down! Unbelievable finish! Miller converts! It’s all over! 🦁24-28 🔴⚫️

I think it gets worse every time I go back to an old recipe on this site...👀

McMaster-Carr remains one of the best designed sites on the web. For those who know, for those who need, and for those who want to get in and out — fast. Purpose-built, no-frills, pure function. A perpetual inspiration. mcmaster.com

@jeffrey_way Agreed. We're a custom framework and our results are ace, but we've grown with the agents from and built up a lot along the way. Feels like magic, but also like we've earned it too. In conventional Laravel/rails apps, it could completely surprise people with minimal effort.

And I’m not trying to shill for traditional monolith frameworks like Laravel and Rails, but I do wonder if it’s the conventions and structure that makes all the difference.

If you haven't had a "wow, that was wildly impressive" moment with AI yet, I don't know how. It's certainly not perfect, and it frequently needs tweaks and refactors, but I've had truly goosebump-worthy results when it practically one shots a new feature.

"they're just slow because integration tests are slow" Claude knows.

What was he thinking there 🫣 A Dominik Szoboszlai blunder sees Barnsley pull one back before half-time 🙌 📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK

Words to live by...

Introducing: The New Pyramid

@taylorotwell Nice, I call that programming by wishful thinking. Used to do it with tests and mocks though - wiki.c2.com/?WishfulThinki… I've been the other way around with Claude Code though, I'm a little picky after the fact.

Over the last few weeks I've become much happier with Claude Code + Opus 4.5. One adjustment I made: hand writing the interfaces / contracts of what I'm trying to build. Some of the argument and return types won't even be real yet. Doesn't matter. Then when prompting I can tell Claude I've defined the interfaces and where. From there is mainly just has to color in between the lines and I make very minor adjustments.

My #1 priority right now is to ease the dread of figuring out how to pay bills at the start of February. I am in Japan until Jan 25th, without my laptop, unable to do proper interviews. 😭 Not great! Open to short term contracts, as this can be less "risky" for both sides ❤️

@seemly @JackEllis I'd never thought too much about it, I just assumed that is the way he gets his name out there and stays relevant.

@JackEllis Hah! Giving an initial benefit of the doubt. Definitely a skill I need to relearn!

Time to block this guy. Imagine waking up and deciding to attack Jeffrey Way of all people. Jeffrey has done so much for our community and the idea that he is selfish is completely unhinged. Small business layoffs are not the same as big corporation layoffs. They are painful.

THE GREATEST FIRST TOUCH IN FOOTBALL HISTORY IN A SLOWER MOTION!!!!!

@adamwathan I've found over time that I really don't like being a blocker for other people, so I prioritise my work to enable them. I imagine many others are similar. Turns out I'm just the same with coding agents. Hard to let go of the thought that my agents are doing nothing all weekend.

Exactly how I’m starting to feel. Any time I have to type precise syntax by hand now feels like such a tedious chore, and (surprisingly and thankfully) programming is still fun, probably more fun. My biggest problem now is coming up with enough worthwhile ideas to fully leverage the productivity boost.

HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden