John Van Wagenen

My results got better when I stopped treating AI like a coding assistant and started treating it like a team. The workflow is the superpower. The tool just runs it. johnvw.dev/blog/cursor-vs…

People keep saying Claude Code is the way to go, but I'm not seeing it. The only advantage I've seen is the CLI. Everything else seems to come out to ergonomics. What am I missing? #VibeCoding

Nobody told you, but you're a manager now. You've got an intern. Fast, capable, occasionally chaotic. Whether you wanted to manage or not — here we are. The skills that make a great manager are the same ones that make AI actually useful. johnvw.dev/blog/congrats-…

Most of us treat AI like a smarter autocomplete. But it’s much more powerful as an orchestrator. I broke down how I turned my personal bug-fixing workflow into a structured, two-phase AI system (Planning + Implementation). Full breakdown: johnvw.dev/blog/systems-t…

AI tools default to being helpful and agreeable. That's usually good, but it creates a trap: We can follow them down the wrong path simply because they sound confident. I wrote about this pattern and techniques to push back: johnvw.dev/blog/you-are-a…

AI can make you feel competent in code you do not actually understand. That false confidence is more dangerous than bad output. I wrote about how this shows up in engineering and what to do about it: johnvw.dev/blog/the-most-…

Engineers often say about AI: “I don’t trust it.” “Does it really save time?” “It’s just a statistical model.” Fair. But today’s AI is very different from the ML many of us learned to distrust. I explain what changed and where it helps vs hurts: johnvw.dev/blog/demystify…

A lot of engineering work happens before the first line of code: clarifying requirements, refining stories, reviewing designs, keeping context aligned. I wrote about how I’m using AI to reduce friction across that work, and where it still breaks down. johnvw.dev/blog/ai-and-so…

Vibe coding on weekends vs. enterprise AI. A look at the massive difference between personal projects and shipping to production codebases. { author: @jtvanwage } dev.to/jtvanwage/usin…

@deedydas @thecsguy To that point, I wrote some thoughts: johnvw.dev/blog/using-ai-… AI in enterprise looks different and legacy systems will slowly evolve and models slowly get better at handling them.

A lot of these “codebase too large” crowd work in code designed for large orgs that have very poor token efficiency. Google/FB have a hyperfixation on modularity and DRY (don’t repeat yourself) that it takes a 100 line utils file to represent a 10 token function. Coding agents sometimes struggle with context management because there’s too much context bloat. Humans do too! You often have to go 15 function calls deep just to trace one simple server call. Eventually we will find coding design principles that are suitable for agents not humans, but until then legacy codebases will evolve real slowly.

Today was proof that fully polished new products can be built entirely with “vibe coding” tools like Claude Code. Many people, espp in BigTech, who still don’t believe it: – you haven’t tried the latest models – you don’t have the right setup – codebase is still too large – your code style is not well-represented in the training data All 4 of these are entirely self-imposed problems. You will be outrun on product velocity if you aren’t adopting these tools.

@jeresig Well now I feel old...

Hard to believe it's been 20 years... incredible! And so much has changed since then. JavaScript has moved from a fun lang dabbling in apps (Ajax) to something that has changed all of software engineering (Node, TypeScript). An amazing adventure 🚀

AI has been incredibly enabling for me—both in small personal projects and in enterprise codebases. What’s interesting is how differently that value shows up in each context. I wrote about those differences here: johnvw.dev/blog/using-ai-…

@walmarthelp Why is account recovery so difficult? My account is either suspended or closed, but I cannot find any email about that. Every way to contact you is gated by entering your email which only tells me my account is suspended or closed. Calling is no use either.

@kentcdodds I saw you and had to point you out to my family!

Getting the choir set for Saturday evening session of General Conference! Tune in at 6pm Mountain Time youtube.com/live/TOhNW4U64…

I once scoffed at TypeScript. I was wrong. Now I see people scoffing at AI—and I know how this story ends. vdubinatorcoder.blogspot.com/2025/08/dont-m…

Nothing like having Cursor fixing one thing and Claude Code working on another. It gets really spicy when you have multiple of each working on different things.

I've been talking with people about vector databases a bit of late. Here's a quick write-up taking a high level look at them: vdubinatorcoder.blogspot.com/2025/07/beyond…

If AI gives you garbage, it's the AI's fault, right? Some thoughts on our responsibilities with AI: vdubinatorcoder.blogspot.com/2025/06/on-abd…

What is Gen AI? And what tools are there in that space? Some more thoughts in AI: vdubinatorcoder.blogspot.com/2025/06/unlock…

Just scribbling down some thoughts on model sizes: vdubinatorcoder.blogspot.com/2025/06/when-s…