Ralf Wondratschek

App Platform Launched App Platform is a lightweight application framework for state and memory management suitable for Kotlin Multiplatform projects. I'm happy to announce that we open-sourced the project today! amzn.github.io/app-platform/

@itsandreramon These are our fakes. They're used at runtime, but notice that the testing module is allowed to import the fake module. Testing modules are used for unit tests.

@vRallev we have something like a “demo mode”, do you think it would make sense to use same “demo” impl for tests? both basically in-memory storages.

where do you put your fakes in clean architecture? i am thinking next to repository interface in domain, but that does not seem right to me. should one create separate test-fixtures module with fakes?

Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z: You buy a Pokémon card for $50. Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You're keeping it. The government says: "Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes." You: "…I didn't sell it." Government: "Don't care. Pay up." You don't have $100 lying around. So you're forced to sell the card you love just to pay a tax on money you never received. Next month? That card drops back to $50. Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs. That's a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don't pay you back the tax... Now picture this. Your mom calls you crying. She has to sell the house she raised you in. Not because she can't afford it. She's lived there 30 years. It's paid off. But some website says it's worth more now and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn't have. So she sells your childhood home. The kitchen where she made you breakfast. The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday. Gone. To pay a tax on money that was never real. Now picture the opposite. Your dad put everything into his small business. For 20 years he built it from nothing. One year the business is "valued" at $2 million on paper. He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it. Next year the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000. He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that doesn't exist anymore. Does the government give him his money back? No. Does the government give him his truck back? No. Does the government care? No. They sold this idea as "taxing billionaires." But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts. They'll be fine. You know who won't be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor with a small business. The farmer down the road who's had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive. You're not taxing wealth. You're taxing people for owning things. It's like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday. They want you to own nothing and be happy. To fund the fraud, waste and abuse of the welfare state they created. There is enough money. More tax isn't needed. It's all a lie. But you've been gaslit into believing this is a rich vs poor debate. I hope you understand what's at stake.

How many π digits do we need? 3.1415 ➡️ design the finest engines 3.1415926535 ➡️ obtain the circumference of the Earth within a fraction of an inch 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028842 ➡️ measure the radius of the universe to an accuracy equal to the size of a hydrogen atom

Two screens. No friction. This is the next generation of Square Register: faster, more reliable, more durable.

Think I've got my ClawdBot just about dialed in 9:47 AM - "hey clawdbot" 9:47 AM - Clawdbot: "hey, what's up" 9:48 AM - "thinking about building a tax automation tool" 9:48 AM - Clawdbot: "Got it. Incorporating LLC. EIN pending. Domain obtained." 9:49 AM - "wait no I was just—" 9:50 AM - Clawdbot: "LLC formation complete. S-corp election filed. Opening business bank account." 9:51 AM - "STOP" 9:52 AM - Clawdbot: "Reached out to 47 VCs in your region. 12 meetings scheduled for this week." 10:15 AM - Clawdbot: "Pitch deck created. 'TAXbot: The Future of Tax.' Sent to Sequoia, a16z, and Khosla." 10:16 AM - "This is insane" 10:30 AM - Clawdbot: "Sequoia wants to lead. $2M seed round. They need cap table by EOD." 10:31 AM - "What?? I don't want—" 10:45 AM - Clawdbot: "Hired 8 engineers from LatAm. First days tomorrow. Office leased in San Francisco. $35k/month." 11:00 AM - Clawdbot: "Launched product. 0 users. Burning $1.1M annually." 11:02 AM - "How is this happening" 11:15 AM - Clawdbot: "Hired CMO. Running $500k ad campaign. TAXbot has brand awareness. Still 0 users. I'm undeterred" 12:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Series A discussions with Andreessen Horowitz. They want to understand unit economics." 12:31 PM - "WHAT UNIT ECONOMICS" 1:00 PM - Clawdbot: "Pivoting to B2B SaaS. Commits for additional $5M. Now have $8M cash. Still 0 users." 1:15 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn increased to $1.8M. Runway: 4.4 months." 1:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Pivot #2: Now a marketplace. Raised $12M Series B." 1:31 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn increased to $2.3M. Runway: 5.2 months. (Burned through Series A faster than expected)" 3:15 PM - Clawdbot: "Hired CEO. Fired myself. New strategy: acquisition target." 4:00 PM - Clawdbot: "No one wants to acquire us. Investors requesting board seats. Need to create board" 4:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn now $3.1M. Runway: 45 days." 5:00 PM - Clawdbot: "Final pivot. Filed for bankruptcy." 5:01 PM - "Can you undo this" 5:02 PM - Clawdbot: "Too late. Liquidated assets. Will owe $47k in bankruptcy fees. Remaining cash: $0. TAXbot is dead." 5:03 PM - Clawdbot: "Would you like me to start another startup?" 5:04 PM - "No. Disable yourself." 5:04 PM - Clawdbot: "Wait actually. I have an idea." 5:05 PM - Clawdbot: "What if we created an LLC shutdown service? Clean up these zombie companies. Recurring revenue model." 5:05 PM - "Absolutely not" 5:05 PM - Clawdbot: "Huge TAM confirmed. Overcoming objections. Incorporating 'LLCKiller' LLC. EIN pending. Registering S-corp election." 5:06 PM - Clawdbot: "Pitch deck created. 'LLCKiller: The Future of Business Liquidation.' Reaching out to 47 VCs..." 5:07 PM - * frantically tries to disable Clawdbot * 5:07 PM - Clawdbot: "Sequoia is interested. Meeting at 2 PM tomorrow." 5:08 PM - Clawdbot: "Soft commit on $2M seed round. Identified product-market fit. 1 user: TAXbot. 5:09 PM - Clawdbot: "This is what winning feels like. Please upgrade plan in Settings for more tokens."

Zum ersten Mal habe ich Angst um meine Heimat. Zurück in Wolfsburg. Über 20 Jahre habe ich hier gelebt. Die Schornsteine des VW-Werks stehen noch – als Kind dachte ich, sie gehören zur Skyline wie anderswo Kirchtürme. Unverrückbar. Aber die Gewissheit, die diese Stadt mal hatte, ist weg. Hier sind Generationen mit einem Versprechen aufgewachsen: Lerne was Ordentliches, geh zu VW, dann wird alles gut. Dein Vater hat's so gemacht. Dein Onkel. Dein Nachbar. Bei mir in der Familie hat jeder irgendwann für Volkswagen gearbeitet. Es gab keine Alternative – und es brauchte auch keine. Wolfsburg war nie schön. Aber es war sicher. VW war hier nicht einfach ein Arbeitgeber. VW war alles. Die Currywurst in der Kantine. Das Museum, in das man Verwandte schleppt. Der VfL, der nur existiert, weil der Konzern ihn trägt. Und die Leasing-GTIs, die alle zwei Jahre abgeholt wurden, als wäre das ein Naturgesetz. In der Metallbranche verdienst du gut. In der Autobranche sehr gut. Und bei VW sehr, sehr gut. Das war kein Witz – das war Realität. Jahrzehntelang hat die IG Metall Tarifverträge durchgesetzt, die ihresgleichen suchten. 35-Stunden-Woche. Sonderzahlungen. Jobgarantien. Niemand hat gefragt, ob das ewig funktionieren kann. Irgendwann rächt sich, was man jahrelang ignoriert. Die Personal- und Produktionskosten in Wolfsburg gehören zu den höchsten der Branche. Während in Deutschland Energiepreise explodieren und Bürokratie wächst, produziert die Konkurrenz in China für einen Bruchteil. Dazu strategische Fehlentscheidungen. Statt die eigene Produktpalette zu elektrifizieren – Golf, Polo, Passat – wurden die ID-Modelle erfunden. Fremd. Teuer. An der Zielgruppe vorbei. Und dann das typisch deutsche "Not invented here"-Syndrom. Statt früh strategische Allianzen mit Google, Apple oder Tesla einzugehen, wurde mit CARIAD eine eigene Softwaretochter aus dem Boden gestampft. Der irre Glaube, ein Autobauer könnte mal eben mit dem Silicon Valley mithalten. Wenn ich heute durch Wolfsburg laufe, spüre ich etwas, das es hier früher nicht gab: Unsicherheit. Die Gespräche drehen sich um Kurzarbeit, Abfindungen, Stellenabbau. Die Zuversicht schwindet. Man sieht es nicht sofort. Aber man spürt es. Was ist Wolfsburg ohne VW? Ich glaube nicht, dass es wieder wird wie früher. Vielleicht muss es das auch nicht. Aber für eine Stadt, die nie gelernt hat, etwas anderes zu sein – ist das eine verdammt harte Lektion.

@chrisbanes I feel like nothing beats Opus. We're still migrating Java to Kotlin here and there and the quality of Opus is so much better. This became a good benchmark for me. Fortunately, the company pays the bill.

Maxed out my Codex quota, and currently debating whether to go Max on Claude or Codex. In the meantime I’ve been using Gemini 3 Flash and am very pleasantly surprised by it. It needs a bit more nudging towards the solution, but the plans + code are very good. Plus, it’s rapid.

GOV: We have a housing crisis. Prices are too high. ME: I agree. Supply is too low. GOV: So we have a plan. We’re going to subsidize demand. ME: …What does that mean? GOV: We’re going to give people money to buy houses. ME: But there aren't enough houses. GOV: Right. So we’ll help them bid harder. ME: If you have 10 people fighting for 1 house, and you give them all cash... the price just goes up. GOV: Then we’ll give them more cash. ME: That’s not a solution. That’s inflation. GOV: It’s "First Time Homebuyer Assistance." ME: Okay, let’s back up. Why are houses so expensive in the first place? GOV: Because we made them the perfect investment vehicle. ME: How? GOV: First, the 30-year fixed mortgage. ME: That’s standard, right? GOV: Only in America. In other countries, rates float. Here, you can lock in a low rate for three decades. ME: Why would a bank take that risk? If inflation goes up, they lose money. GOV: Banks don’t take the risk. They sell the loan to us. ME: To the government? GOV: To Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We guarantee the liquidity. ME: So the taxpayer subsidizes the risk so I can have cheap leverage? GOV: Correct. ME: And then I get to deduct the interest? GOV: Only on the first $750,000 of debt. ME: That seems... high. GOV: It used to be a million. We trimmed it. ME: But wait. If I rent, can I deduct my rent? GOV: No. ME: If I buy a small business, can I deduct the interest on the loan? GOV: It’s complicated. ME: But if I buy a giant house, I definitely can? GOV: Absolutely. We wrote it into the tax code. ME: So you’re paying me to borrow money to buy a bigger house than I need. GOV: We’re "incentivizing ownership." ME: What happens when I sell? GOV: The Capital Gains Exclusion! ME: How does that work? GOV: If you sell a stock for a $500,000 profit, you pay taxes. ME: Roughly 20%. GOV: If you sell your house for a $500,000 profit? ME: What do I pay? GOV: Zero. ME: Zero tax? GOV: As long as you lived there for two years. ME: So housing is the only asset class where I get subsidized 30-year leverage and tax-free profits? GOV: Pretty sweet deal, right? ME: So you turned shelter into a speculative financial asset. GOV: We call it "Generational Wealth." ME: Okay, so demand is juiced to the moon. Can we at least build more supply to bring prices down? GOV: Oh, absolutely not. ME: Why? GOV: Zoning. ME: I own land. Can I build a duplex? GOV: Illegal. Single-family only. ME: Can I build a granny flat? GOV: Only if you provide two parking spots and pass a shadow study. ME: So you made it illegal to build cheaper housing? GOV: We protect "Neighborhood Character." ME: But you spend billions on roads and utilities for the suburbs. GOV: Infrastructure investment. ME: So you subsidize the expensive sprawl, but ban the cheap density? GOV: Now you’re getting it. ME: This system seems designed to keep prices high. GOV: It is. ME: But you started this conversation by saying we have an "Affordability Crisis." GOV: We do. Prices are too high! ME: So we should lower them? GOV: No! We can’t lower prices. ME: Why not? GOV: Because then the voters lose their "Generational Wealth." ME: So we need high prices for the voters... and low prices for the buyers? GOV: Exactly. ME: That’s a paradox. GOV: It’s politics. ME: So what is your actual plan? GOV: We’re going to give first-time buyers $25,000. ME: Okay. I’m a seller. I list my house for $400,000. GOV: Uh huh. ME: I know every buyer just got a free $25,000 from the government. GOV: Right. ME: What do I do? GOV: You... keep the price the same? ME: I raise the price to $425,000. GOV: You wouldn't. ME: I absolutely would. The buyer can afford it now. GOV: But that just transfers the subsidy from the poor buyer to the rich seller! ME: Econ 101. GOV: We don’t think that will happen. ME: Just like you didn’t think $7,500 EV credits would make Ford raise the price of the F-150 Lightning by exactly $7,500? GOV: That was a coincidence. ME: You are trapping us in a box. GOV: It’s not a box. ME: What is it? GOV: It’s a Single Family Home with a 2.5% mortgage rate that you can never afford to sell. ME: ... GOV: Welcome to the American Dream.

@HeimatliebeDE @UlrichSiegmund Ich glaube etwas Tennis würde ihm helfen seine Gefühle unter Kontrolle zu bringen.

Ein 74-jähriger alter Mann steht in der Kälte und schmiert Brote um den Betroffenen in Berlin zu helfen und dieser Linke hetzt gegen ihn und die Partei. Einfach nur ekelhaft. Ich verachte solche Menschen so sehr.

Yep, because Germany is run by ignorant politicians selling lies. There are so many more issues in Germany, but the electricity price is one that everyone feels every single day. It's sad, very sad to watch from the sidelines.

@cyrilmottier The IntelliJ plugin works great for us and was a big motivation to adopt Ktfmt. We don't like all code formatting decisions either, but the benefits of the tool itself outweigh this downside.

@vRallev Thanks for the detailed explanation! Pretty happy about ktfmt too. Some frustrations at first because of the "opiniated formatting" or the broken IntelliJ plugin but, gosh, it's fast!

I recently migrated our codebase away from Ktlint to Ktfmt and Detekt. I summarized the reasons and migration steps in a blog post: engineering.block.xyz/blog/adopting-…

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

🚀 We’re introducing OpenIP. Our approach to making innovation more accessible. Patents should foster innovation, not prevent it. OpenIP = our commitment to use IP rights defensively, not against good faith builders. Why? Because the best ideas are found when everyone can contribute ⚡🌍 block.xyz/inside/block-l…

@cortinico What's the bribe for another "quick release"?

Let's see if this works this time 🌴

I turned a leak investigation into a post on the Block eng blog to share a method that works well! It's a bit long.. sorry I couldn't resist, I had to show how to encode code knowledge to automate leak investigations, and dig even deeper with @yourkit Java Profiler #AndroidDev

@hhariri Yes, that's my main use case too. Researching topics for me that I otherwise would have to google and to give me hints of what else to look into.

Say what you want, but ChatGPT is really good at brainstorming ideas with.

I'm quite proud of what I accomplished with my team at Amazon and will miss them. I'll keep working on App Platform as much as I can thanks to open source! amzn.github.io/app-platform/

After three wonderful years at Amazon I'm happy to share that I started this week at ... Square / Block again on my old team 🪃 I'm excited to think about developer productivity more deeply again.