atharva

wikipedia screenshot of brooks's law page.

Question for the "launch many parallel claude agents to go faster" crowd: Why isn't that the same problem as the Brooks's law all over again?

despite all the AI hype there's only been two kinds of tools with direct improvements to my life:

- chat (like chatgpt, claude ai)
- terminal coding agents (like claude code)

surprising how nothing better has stuck yet

Table of Contents General guidelines Starting Points Official announcements, blogs and papers from those building AI High signal people to follow News and Media Esoterica Do I chug water from a firehose?

Several people ask me about how I'm keeping up with all the AI things and finding signal in this noisy landscape. I wrote a guide explaining this.

blog.nilenso.com/blog/2025/06...

<3

Andrej Karpathy on the YCombinator startup school stage talking about my AI-assisted coding blog post

I was seeing @karpathy.bsky.social's Software 3.0 talk, as one should.

Surreal to see him recommend my writing to make a point on AI-assisted coding

"Is that me on TV??" moment

I loved it! simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/10/...

indeed, prompting is still extremely sensitive and brittle even today.

Some of my colleagues @nilenso.com managed to get better code by just saying "write it like Rich Hickey would" which seemed to have activated the right neurons

in my case, I did not get into the weeds of the workflow, because my own workflows are constantly changing as these tools and models evolve

I tried to focus on what consistently helped throughout all the changes, and the best rule of thumb I could come up with is "what helps the human helps the ai"

glad you found it useful!

Quality, and the cutlets of enthusiasm Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was on my reading wishlist for a while. From the title, I assumed the book would be something like a tasteful self-help book, a quirky blend of kōanic mystici...

Quality, and the cutlets of enthusiasm
atharvaraykar.com/quality-and-...

switched to ghost

atharva's internet place tldraw is canvas software that runs on your browser (like MS Paint, excalidraw etc). This project caught my attention when I saw demos of fun AI experiments with the canvas interface*. Even the plain…

I have revamped my website of essays.

it's now more searchable, supports commenting and also doubles as a newsletter. now back to writing again.

is "cracked" the new codeninja/rockstar?

In brief, directly or indirectly, I will offer help and happiness to all my mothers, And secretly take upon myself All their hurt and suffering.

We ain't playin' with y'all niggas, man, you heard? Sometimes you just gotta catch chlamydia on these niggas, G shit You know what I'm saying? Gonorrhea, all of that shit All of that shit I catch all diseases in the world So the world don't have no more diseases, you feel me? G-shit Yeah, yeah (P.Soul on the track)

Buddhist Teacher Geshe Langri Tangpa (circa 1100 AD)
🤝
XXXTentacion (2018)

General consensus in the replies and quotes of this seems to be that the entire concept of "AI skills" is a joke - how hard is typing text into a chatbot, really?

I will continue to argue that it's genuinely difficult, and that the challenge in using these tools is widely underestimated

baader meinhof'd

a trap I see with a lot of software engineers is missing the big picture. the code and the tech is not the engineer's most valuable artifact. it actually is the systems that they are enabling and building.

especially in hard complex problem spaces like public health!

that's why I took this angle.

reading meadow's thinking in systems gave a lot of structure and vocabulary to the type of reasoning I found enjoyable when trying to make sense of the world.

with the work I did in public health, these patterns were plain as day to me. I had to write about it.

hey Thiago! the email shared by Daniel works. I'm also around here and on twttr

the reason i write and encourage other people to write is because writing is the most scalable form of persuasion and negotiation

it's one of the best coordination mechanisms that humans have

my current pet conspiracy theory is that a lot of your favourite artists are heavily using AI generated sequences in their music, but no one has noticed it yet

TIL about the Modi (मोडी / 𑘦𑘻𑘚𑘲‎) script, used for Marathi up until the 1940s.
In 2025, it looks like AI generated Devanagari.

A ‘systems thinking’ approach to saving lives from heart attacks and strokes A technologists’ skill set of crafting scalable solutions works well on notoriously hard problems like public health. The way to make it approachable is to adopt ‘systems thinking’.

One of our engineers wrote a thoughtful article about how public health challenges can be framed using "Systems Thinking" @atharvaraykar.com www.simple.org/blog/a-syste...

I discovered that I'm radically optimistic. I used to be cynical about things. It wasn't unusual for me tell people that everything is crap. It still rings true to me—the differenc...

The phrase "systemic change" is thrown around a lot, but very few understand the true depth of what systemic change looks like.

Once I felt it in my bones, I couldn't help but be radically optimistic. I found a clearer framework for engaging with the world.

gappa.atharvaraykar.com/atharva/i-di...

A ‘systems thinking’ approach to saving lives from heart attacks and strokes A technologists’ skill set of crafting scalable solutions works well on notoriously hard problems like public health. The way to make it approachable is to adopt ‘systems thinking’.

The most meaningful work I've ever done has been with the wonderful tech team who work on the simple.org app.

I wrote on the Simple blog about how ideas from systems dynamics can be used to make sense of hard problems like preventing deaths from heart disease.

www.simple.org/blog/a-syste...

is wikivoyage.org doing the thing you are looking for?

thoughts on tldraw computer tldraw is canvas software that runs on your browser (like MS Paint, excalidraw etc). This project caught my attention when I saw demos of...

wrote a bit more about my experience of using tldraw computer:
gappa.atharvaraykar.com/atharva/thou...

i quickly concocted a writer's block unblocker
(with @tldraw.com computer)

it takes an oblique strategy (from the brian eno et al card deck) and uses it to provide unhinged critique of the essay you are working on to help you break out of a rut

link to program: computer.tldraw.com/t/4KoB33nFEr...

i figured out how to use twttr without frying my brain I also started using twttr again in 2024 after a couple of years out. I never used it because I considered twitter problematic. Somehow...

woops

gappa.atharvaraykar.com/atharva/i-fi...

i picked up india after gandhi by ramachandra guha recently and it is a 10/10 book so far
it has renewed my fascination with india

context is that which is scarce. this book will catch you all up with some context