J7K

hi frens, nakamas, and homies 👋🏼 i'm jakk my locals call me aj; wizard in training, known for my perma-beard. 🚧minor rebrand moment as i start rolling out my solo builder blog + developer resources. gotta serve the algo gods that hate when you take up more than one lane. i'll still be giving snarky hot takes and sharing my creative work at my legacy @jakkvega ~ my more focused soloprenuer+developer takes will land here with you can we catch up late game and build something great? let's find out 🏴‍☠️ ~J7K

@X i dunno why i find this so fun. like a little trainset, i cant wait to turn on the lights

hi @x today is officially my twitterversary, or whatever we're calling it now. after 4 years i'm going to clock this as a win. not counting the 3.99 years when I was out touching grass. mid 2026 and a couple weeks later: - 72 new connections - 1.5 fables - 300+ repos - 100 domains can we reach the magical 100 connects so I can finally get out of the content gulag?

@adamlyttleapps ha any racing game with a volcano level is totally worth it

I’m burning all my Fable 5 tokens building this. Better be worth it 😅

@kinglycrow yeah id feel bummed too. counting out the fog is a rookie mistake. hopefully they'll make up for it NYE.

@J7K_dev (the ggb fireworks not the 250th anniversary obviously lol)

I've only been in SF 3 years now, never really paid attention to the 4th here, today I learned you will basically never see the fireworks lol. Good thing I pulled up this site before going out microclimates.today/fireworks

@thsottiaux are those drums of liberation i hear

spending any length of time with fable -- it's hinting at something super capable that makes me worry what the next 6 months are going to explode into. unraveling prior work by lesser models. completing gaps ive been idling over for weeks. having said that, I dont think learning to code was/is wasted because thinking in abstractions would have been painful without it. some skills you only really pick up by having been hands-on and not via osmosis

the "software engineering" i was doing in 2022 has been fully killed by fable for a minute i thought it wasn't that different to opus/codex, but once you get fable managing sub-agents, it becomes clear that it's 10x better i used to be half joking when i said i wasted years of my life learning programming languages by hand, but now that's just 100% true there's approximately 0 value in knowing how to code if you want a job building things today, you better know how to actually build product end to end. don't expect that you can just be a CRUD monkey anymore you need to have your own ideas & vision, be capable of sending outbound & taking feedback, iterating, marketing, improving, deciding when to stop loss and pivot, then running through that loop on repeat the only value left in us meatbags is our ability to be accountable & own things end to end

@thsottiaux svg

What is something that you feel is surprising that Codex still can't do well and we should have gotten right a while ago?

@theo and here I thought they moved the show to the ggb

Happy America Day nerds

❤️

@jakecastilloooo from one jake to another, congrats fellow jake

My actual income breakdown from the last 13 years: 2013: $13/hr 2017: $32,000/yr + free tuition (grad school) 2018: 60k/yr 2020: $100k/yr 2022: $120k 2024: $150k Late 2024: $0 Most of 2025: $0 2026: Not worried about money anymore

Today is America's 250th birthday. 1 year ago, I became of citizen of the USA. America is the one place where chasing your crazy idea makes people root for you. Whatever the idea is. A startup nobody asked for. A pop-punk band at 30. A weird little product you can't stop thinking about. You say it out loud here and people get excited and ask how they can help. That's the magic. Other places I've lived, I've gotten torn town. Not here. The USA celebrates you for going after the thing you actually want to build. 250 years in, the best thing America still gives you is permission. Permission to try. Permission to reinvent yourself. Permission to believe you can do better than the people who came before you. It isn't perfect. No place is. But I think it's worth celebrating. Happy birthday to the best place on earth to build your dream. I'm grateful to be part of it.

building is not about delivering the perfect product in one go it's about the iterative process needed to discover what works and what makes sense if building is iterative then there is nothing to fail at

i refuse to say substrate

Let me know if this is just me: Noticed someone I know who is very "AI-pilled" and uses agents 24/7 to... start to talk noticeably more like these LLMs write. Eg more heavily using adjectives like "geniune", frequently terms like "the shape of" and many more examples

@CodeWithTamara its in stages, at different levels you get to post different things lol. down here in the gulag we have to fight over the scraps

I post my thoughts, nothing. I post my dev work, nothing. I post my face, thinking that would work, nothing. I post about my transition from biochem to developer at 37, I get some reactions. I post the 💩 let's connect post, X explodes. So sad.

@unfernaonx @audiencon you missed the premium promo it was worth it lol

@audiencon Unemployed here ☠️ I’m still wondering I should get a job or go all in

4 things I did to escape the 9‑5: 1. Built a side project while employed 2. Reached $3K MRR before quitting 3. Saved 12 months of runway 4. Started posting daily on X (took 18 months, worth it)

@SahilBloom just missing the star spangled running shorts

25 Miles for America’s 250th Brutal in this heat wave, but we got it done. - First 20 Miles: 7:22 Pace - Final 5 Miles: 6:38 Pace Do hard things.

@IamAroke the best time to talk about it, id argue. learn anytime

I think the best time to learn a technology is just before it goes mainstream. Not after everyone is already talking about it.

@_dylanga seasons are cattle -- waiting to be a hamburger

Long running sessions are a smell. Seasons are cattle, not pets. You should be able to clear the entire context window of a task at any point without fear.

people always forget to asterisk with *for me

If you say “ads don’t work,” you’re really saying that you’re ceding that growth channel to competitors who know what they’re doing. You might say: “Yes, of course! I prefer SEO and Social and building attention over time. More fun, better customers.” Good answer, but that’s different from saying “ads don’t work.” Cross-apply to all other marketing channels.