Mark Papadakis

@lemire I appreciate those kinds of insights/specifics involving tools, processes, and choices of technologies and platforms. Thanks!

My programming setup (2026) I use VS Code as my main text editor: It works the same everywhere I care about (macOS, Windows, Linux). It is fast enough. It has useful features like the ability to mount a remote Linux system and work on my MacBook as if I were directly on the remote machine. It has GitHub Copilot. I’m not an advanced VS Code user. I use few extensions — the fewer, the better. I don’t do fancy editing (like multi-cursor editing). I don’t customize shortcuts. I could probably save a few seconds here and there, but I don’t care. I waste more time making coffee than I do editing files suboptimally. I spend little time on Windows. I have one Windows laptop with VS Code preconfigured. It has a shell that can compile C/C++ using CMake. I never remember exactly how it works, but I set it up once each time I update the machine. I use Windows only to debug and benchmark. Although I started programming professionally with Borland and Microsoft tools in a debugger-heavy style, these days I rarely use a debugger. I prefer to write more tests. People are often surprised at how many tests I write and run. I use continuous integration fanatically. I use different programming languages: C, C++, Go, Java, C#, Python, and JavaScript. I try to keep everything under VS Code so I don’t have to learn different tools when switching languages. I use the command line a lot. I also use AI heavily. I like Claude CLI and GitHub Copilot. Grok is available by way of GitHub Copilot and it works well. These are great tools. I ask the AI to build tools, create tests, and more. For example, I recently asked AI to create a tool that checks whether my new function is branch-free by compiling the code, disassembling it, and analyzing the instructions. It is quite clear that I will be building more and more custom tools with AI, to help me. One great use of AI are reviews. Instead of using AI to generate more code faster, I get AI to slow me down, review my code more carefully, throw in more tests. In many instances, quality matters more than volume. I love how AI lets me quickly test ideas: “What if we did it this way instead?” AI really nails down the standard optimizations, letting me concentrate on original techniques. It allows me to up my game. I don't trust the AI, but Iet it try things for me. If the AI can make something work, then I explore further. For profiling, I like perf under Linux. When needed, I use Xcode Instruments on macOS. I prefer to profile under Linux. For building websites for my projects, I default to Hugo. The core idea is that you write content in Markdown and it generates static HTML. No backend required. I adopted Hugo years ago for my homepage (lemire.me/en/). My blog itself runs on WordPress. After 20+ years, it is a highly tuned (though imperfect) setup. Migrating it would be too much work. I don’t like typing content directly in WordPress. So I write my posts in Markdown using VS Code, convert them to HTML, and copy/paste into WordPress. Yeah, there are MarkDown plugins but none of them work well enough. I don’t understand Substack. I will never charge for my blog content or put ads on it. You can still subscribe by email (no ads, ever). I like staying in control. I love MarkDown. I wrote an entire book using Markdown in VS Code: Mastering Programming: From Testing to Performance in Go (amazon.com/Mastering-Prog…). I convert it to LaTeX and then to PDF. I make generous use of Docker containers — for example, to run old versions of Hugo or exotic compilers. I avoid system-specific dependencies whenever possible. I have a few web services and I use AWS Lightsail for them. Build a container, deploy, and forget. Ready to use.

@mitchellh @jarredsumner I understand people don’t care for copilot. I love it. I use it to understand and explore codebases. I used it to understand ghostty codebase too. It’s fantastic for such use cases. My only gripe with GH is that it’s just slow (pages and responses).

Here’s what I’d do if I was in charge of GitHub, in order: 1. Establish a North Star plan around being critical infrastructure for agentic code lifecycles and determine a set of ways to measure that. 2. Fire everyone who works on or advocates for copilot and shut it down. It’s not about the people, Im sure theres many talented people, youre just working at the wrong company. 3. Buy Pierre and launch agentic repo hosting as the first agentic product. Repos would be separate from the legacy web product to start since they’re likely burdened with legacy cross product interactions. 4. Re-evaluate all product lines and initiatives against the new North Star. I suspect 50% get cut (to make room for different ones). The big idea is all agentic interactions should critically rely on GitHub APIs. Code review should be agentic but the labs should be building that into GH (not bolted in through GHA like today, real first class platform primitives). GH should absolutely launch an agent chat primitive, agent mailboxes are obviously good. Etc. GH should be a platform and not an agent itself. This is going to be very obviously lacking since I only have external ideas to work off of and have no idea how GitHub internals are working, what their KPIs are or what North Star they define, etc. But, with imperfect information, this is what I’d do.

This is incredible. This machine is capable of cleaning up 100 million kg of plastic ocean waste, and as of 2025, it has already collected about 500,000 kg of plastic. It aims to remove 90% of ocean plastic by 2040.

We are introducing EU Inc. To make building and growing a business across the EU faster, simpler, and smarter. 🔸 Start a company in less than 48 hours 🔸 No minimum capital requirement 🔸 Fully online and borderless

Ghostty 1.3 is now out! Scrollback search, native scrollbars, click-to-move cursor, rich clipboard copy, AppleScript, split drag/drop, Unicode 17 and international text improvements, massive performance improvements, and hundreds more changes. ghostty.org/docs/install/r…

@MParakhin C++20 coroutines were/are brilliant in terms of design and semantics. I would say the same about concepts; agreed about modules. What's your issue with coroutines ?

There is no other way to put it: C++ 20 was sloppily done. Concepts were really needed, but are half-baked. Coroutines are quarter-baked and Modules are an abomination. Now we are undoing the mess.

I spent the last few days pushing Anthropic's VLIW performance take-home kernel optimization challenge to its limits using Claude Code as an orchestrator. The task: schedule operations for a custom VLIW SIMD architecture running a tree traversal with hashing. 256 items, 16 rounds, 5 execution engines with different slot limits. Starting point: 147,734 cycles (naive) Where Claude Code landed: 1,105 cycles — a 134x speedup The journey involved hundreds of AI agents across several dozen iterations, exploring every angle: hash algebraic merges, L4 tree caching, DAG-based list schedulers, 250K+ parameter configurations, emission order sweeps, store engine exploitation, and loop-based kernels. The last gain was 2 cycles, found by sweeping 103,000 configurations. I then had Claude write a formal lower bound proof in Lean showing the kernel cannot run in fewer than 1,081 cycles — proven from load engine capacity (2,089 ops at 2/cycle = 1,045 minimum) plus unavoidable dependency overhead. For verification I relied on Anthropic's test harness and extended it with randomized parameter testing and also extended it with Kernel Optimization Fun's output index verification. What struck me is how good Claude Code has gotten at orchestrating optimization work. It ran teams of 10 parallel agents in isolated worktrees, each exploring different hypotheses. Agents communicated findings, dead ends propagated instantly, and the system converged on proven optima. The DAG scheduler that broke through a 6-iteration plateau came from Codex (gpt-5.3) running through Claude Code's MCP integration — multi-model orchestration improving the solution. Proebsting's Law says compiler optimizations double program speed every 18 years. AI agents with the right tools are compressing that timeline dramatically — not by improving compilers, but by doing the work compilers can't: reasoning about problem structure, exploring architectural trade-offs, and proving bounds. The 134x speedup here came from algorithmic insight (merged hash stages, path-bits scheduling, bias-free C5), not instruction selection. Wild times for performance engineering.

Daydreaming about an entry MacBook Neo as a thin client for local LLMs and dev work on a maxed future Mac Studio. Apple is creating the best value hardware for local AI and it’s amazing to think of consequences of that.

One of my hobbies has always been studying codebases; AI/LLMs transformed that in so many ways -- it's so easy to just have them analyze codebases now, ask questions, and effectively compress the time it takes to grok things.

@drandakis That's pretty what the EU has been reduced to: coming up with restrictions and regulating anything and everything. The bureaucrats took over, and they do the only thing they knowhow to do: regulate. See also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_th…

Τα λέει ο Αυστριακός δημιουργός του Openclaw που τον αγόρασε η OpenAI. Πάει στην Αμερική και θα μπορεί να δουλέψει και να δημιουργήσει. Εμείς θα μείνουμε με το ωραίο lifestyle, μέχρι που δεν θα το έχουμε ούτε αυτό.

I just published The Cat’s Out of the Bag: Living With AI and Looking Ahead medium.com/p/the-cats-out…

@exQUIZitely Bard’s Tale 1 Skara Brae map is up there too

Most recognizable map in gaming history? Post one that brings back memories to you.

@LunarMinxDev This looks fantastic. I myself care for exploration, traps, puzzles - not very punishing or elaborate(see FTL's Dungeon Master), or rare (see Bards' Tale 1). I love the aesthetics.

Building a dungeon. Love how it looks and feels. What do you expect from such a game? (Keep in mind it is still a spicy game after all). I don't want to make super hardcore puzzles. I just want it to feel atmospheric, but not like a challenge, more like a fun bit. Any ideas, feedback and suggestions are welcome!

@aripap The whole notion of tips ( other than tipping waiters and such ) makes little sense to us Europeans, but you go ahead. Reinforce that AI with your monetary feedback.:)

First time in a Waymo, is it considered appropriate to leave a tip?

@exquizitely The first shadow of the beast played like crap too. Insanely hard. It was more like an insane demo than a game.

Games that looked great but had terrible gameplay/controls? I start with Dragon’s Lair - which I played on my Amiga in 1989. Graphics: top Gameplay: crap If you know another game that qualifies, let’s see how many of these eye-candy-crap games we can remember 😂🙈

Happy 2026. Here’s to robust health and great moments.

This is legitimately one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of Humanity Everyone needs to see this

@EvanFourmizz None will call you weird. Most would agree with you. Also, Star Wars.

Call me weird but the best movie to watch around Xmas time is by far The Fellowship of the Ring. Such a soothing movie.

@lemire I personally postpone large scale code rewrites for as long as I can. This is because new technologies and tools and ideas may be made available later on. Not rewriting may prevent new features or make it hard and result in accumulated hacks and inefficiencies.

I used to always want to rewrite my code. Maybe even use another programming language. « If only I could rewrite my code, it would be so much better now. » If you maintain software projects, you see it all the time. Someone new comes along and they want to start rewriting everything. They always have subjective arguments: it is going to be more maintainable or safer or just more elegant. If your code is battle tested… then the correct instinct is to be conservative and keep your current code. Sometimes you need to rewrite your code : you made a mistake or must change your architecture. But most times, the old code is fine and investing time in updating your current code is better than starting anew. The great intellectual @robinhanson argues that software ages. One of his arguments is that software engineers say that it does. That’s what engineers feel but whether it is true is another matter. « Before Borland’s new spreadsheet for Windows shipped, Philippe Kahn, the colorful founder of Borland, was quoted a lot in the press bragging about how Quattro Pro would be much better than Microsoft Excel, because it was written from scratch. All new source code! As if source code rusted. The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t acquire bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive. Au contraire, baby! Is software supposed to be like an old Dodge Dart, that rusts just sitting in the garage? Is software like a teddy bear that’s kind of gross if it’s not made out of all new material? » (Joel Spolsky)

@The_Pet_Way I suppose he is playing dirty when things don’t his way. Or maybe he is just a clumsy defender. But yeah he should stop doing it.

@markpapadakis I don’t think he would accept that as excuse if somebody did the same foul to him. I’ve seen 3 just bad fouls, not going for the ball, just bad plays it’s tough

Kendrick Nunn is such a talented player, but damn man he be trying to put people in the hospital, I don’t understand it..