"Subscribed for quick summaries of topics. Saves time. Googling and Youtube and collating info isn't convenient."
— RB
Technically
Making practical sense of software and AI.
What are code sandboxes?
Why coding agents need a safe place to play, just like we all do.
AI, tractors and the productivity paradox
Where are AI's productivity gains hiding? What kitted out Model Ts can teach us.
What’s an inference provider?
How the rise of open source AI models is fueling the growth of a new infrastructure category.
Pre-Training
Pre-training is the "undergrad degree" phase where the model builds its foundational knowledge and world model.
Embeddings
Embeddings are how AI models turn words, images, or other data into mathematical coordinates that computers can actually work with.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a Machine Learning model, created and maintained by OpenAI, that generates paragraphs of text in response to prompts.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning uses math to predict an output given an input
Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
Linear Regression
Linear Regression is an old school statistical method for predicting outcomes from a series of numbers.
Reverse ETL
Reverse ETL is the process of syncing data from your data warehouse to your business tools like Salesforce and Hubspot.
Snowflake
Snowflake sells a powerful cloud data warehouse for analytics and data science teams.
dbt Labs
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
ORM
An Object Relational Mapper is software that lets developers interact with their database in their programming language of choice – instead of SQL.
Relational database
A relational database is sort of like Excel, but for developers: it’s how applications store and analyze data.
Confluent
Apache Kafka is a framework for streaming real time data, and Confluent offers Kafka as a managed service.
Elastic
Elasticsearch is a popular open source database for storing and searching unstructured data.
All about Infrastructure as Code
The deceptively simple text files that help you avoid huge mistakes when shipping software.
What's a Package Manager?
And why are AI labs buying them up?
A Beginner’s Guide to Bring Your Own Cloud
The profitable but challenging deployment model sweeping the nation.
Docker
Docker is an engine for running your code in containers, which are isolated little boxes.
PaaS
Platform as a Service is a category of infrastructure products that makes life easier for developers: instead of managing infrastructure on their own, the vendor takes care of things like installing the right software, managing upgrades, and connecting databases.
Heroku
Heroku was and is one of the first cloud platforms as a service (PaaS).
Gitlab
GitLab is a giant tool for literally anything you'd want to do relating to building and deploying software.
Tokenization
Tokenization is one of the ways that backends protect sensitive information, like credit cards or social security numbers.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) lets you route your internet access through a specialized server that keeps your sensitive information private.
Snyk
Snyk helps developers make sure that the code they're writing is secure.
Okta
Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.
"Technically has allowed me better bridge the gap between user problems and how our system works under the hood."
— Adelaide Hallowell
Recent
What are code sandboxes?
Why coding agents need a safe place to play, just like we all do.
Justin GageHow my non-engineering team at Sentry learned to shipFree
We moved 2,500 pages out of our CMS with Claude Code and Git. 4 months ago, most of us hadn't written code.
Matt HendersonAll about Infrastructure as CodeFree
The deceptively simple text files that help you avoid huge mistakes when shipping software.
Will RaphaelsonWhat is Next.js?Free
The web framework your next vibe-coded app will probably be built in.
Justin Gage
AI, tractors and the productivity paradoxFree
Where are AI's productivity gains hiding? What kitted out Model Ts can teach us.
Sachin Benny
When not to vibe codeFree
Should I ship something myself, or call in engineering help?
Sarah Krasnik Bedell
What’s an inference provider?
How the rise of open source AI models is fueling the growth of a new infrastructure category.
Will RaphaelsonWhat their products actually do and why they're so valuable.
Cloudflaredbt LabsSnowflake
StripeQuick explanations of the concepts you see every day.
Video
Analyzing all 203 million trades on Kalshi
Kalshi just raised a new round at an $11B valuation. How much revenue does their prediction market really make?
Sam Schneider
Relationships are the moat
What's the forward deployed engineer role, and why is every startup hiring them?
Sung Won Chung
Learning Tracks
Curated collections of foundational articles to guide you through the basics of getting more technical at work.
AI, it's not that complicated ↗
How to understand and work effectively with AI and ML models and products.
- How do Large Language Models work?
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
- What's RLHF?
How AI models learned to stop being weird and start being helpful.
- What's GPT-3?
GPT-3 is a Machine Learning model that generates text.
- What’s a data science notebook?
Data Science Notebooks help data teams explore data with code.
Analyzing Software Companies ↗
The products and business models of leading software companies.
- Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
- What does Snowflake do?
Snowflake sells a powerful cloud data warehouse for analytics and data science teams.
- What does OpenAI do?
OpenAI is the most popular provider of generative AI models like GPT-4.
- What does dbt do?
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
Building Software Products ↗
How to make positive contributions to your product roadmap.
- The top 5 things PMs should know about engineering
Engineering and code basics that can make you a better PM to work with.
- What's code?
Code is step by step directions, but for computers.
- What's the internet?
A network of computers all connected to each other and sharing information.
- What's cloud?
Cloud is how companies rent infrastructure over the internet.
From Spreadsheets to Databases ↗
You've outgrown Excel, but you've got to put that data somewhere besides your parents basement.
- The Beginner's Guide to Databases
There are 300+ databases; what do they all do?
- SQL for the rest of us
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
- The Excel User's Guide to Databases: Schemas
Why that schema change is going to take your engineers two weeks.
- The Excel User's Guide to Databases: Migrations
Why your feature is held up by a migration and why this is actually good.
How AI Models Actually Work ↗
How do these things actual work under the hood? What does it mean to train one? Is it more like going to the gym, studying for a test, or sleeping?
- What is Machine Learning?
How computers learn patterns from data — and why it’s the foundation for everything from stock prediction to ChatGPT.
- How do Large Language Models work?
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
- How do you train an AI model?
A deep dive into how models like ChatGPT get built.
- The beginner’s guide to AI model architectures
Unlike an onion, hopefully these neural network layers won't make you cry.
Working With Data Teams ↗
How to make positive contributions when working with analytics and data science teams.
- How do product analytics work?
Product analytics is how teams instrument and analyze data about their product usage.
- What your data team is using: the analytics stack
A deep dive into all of the tools that data teams use to do their work.
- SQL for the rest of us
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
- What's the Modern Data Stack?
The new set of tools data teams use to get their jobs done.