I will add a +1 to your recommendation as well, his blog has been my favourite way to keep up with the AI landscape over the last 18 months. Just the right level of detail and technical depth for me
Yeah, honestly the answer is mainly not having a proper job (I don't have anyone who can tell me how to spend my time) combined with constructive procrastination: I've not been making nearly as much progress on my main projects over the past couple of months because there's been way too much stuff I want to write about.
I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten minutes, longer form stuff usually takes one or two hours.
I also deliberately lower my standards for blogging - I often skip conclusions, and I'll publish a piece when I'm still not happy with it (provided I've satisfied myself with the fact checking side of things - I won't dash something out if I'm not certain it's true, at least to the best of my ability.)
One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"?
The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things.
Having relevant projects is key. My https://llm.datasette.io projects gives me the ideal playground for trying stuff out - any time a new API model comes out I can spin up a new plugin to for LLM, which is a great way to try the model with limited development time (most API plugins are a few dozen lines of code).
I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November and December, I'm trying to get it back for January.
Oh that's cool. We've been blogging about AI eng recently, but the project is often "try this idea/tool/library in order to write a blog post about it".
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
Let's not forget he's also discussing things on communities like HN, where I calculate 3 comments/day over the last month (based on a calc I just made, since I subscribe to his comments via https://hnrss.github.io/).
The answer is almost always personal support / personal assistants.
There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc.
These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on.
(This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
Sometimes, sure this is the case. I know a few big time artists who have dedicated teams that are always behind the scenes. But plenty of times it's not, as Simon himself pointed out below.
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.
If I sit in front of a computer all the time I'm awake, I still wouldn't be able to be producing as much content as Simon Willison. My productivity would start to decline after 5~6 hours, and probably diminish after 8~9 hours. The consistency in his output is just magnificent and awe-inspiring.
I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it.
Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons.
He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post:
https://brr.fyi/ - Blog posts from someone who spent over a year in the Antarctic. Lots of interesting details about how the infrastructure works and what life is like working there.
I recall the author identifying female somewhere in all of their posts, but couldn't find the source when I had a quick look.
Might be misremembering...
I publish one post a week with all the recently uploaded talks from nearly all software engineering conferences to save my readers time from endlessly scrolling through messy YT subscriptions and to reduce FOMO.
On top of that, each week, I pick a few talks that I think are a must-watch and write a short narrative to give some context.
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
It helped me get up to speed with gen AI as a graduate school professor and now his posts are the most useful ones I sent to others to help them get oriented.
Not new, but Josh W. Comeau's blog posts (https://www.joshwcomeau.com) on frontend and React are always next-level, you can tell there's passion in the details.
The one that says: "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't
solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel"
I've been compiling a list of my favourite blogs (and some other links) over the past few days. There are so many cool people doing cool stuff in their own little corners of the web.
Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
Don't bother with this one - the latest post (The Return of Magic) is promoting a load of unscientific woo (The Telepathy Tapes). The author seems to seriously mean the title of the post literally.
Basically his whole "return of magic" premise seems to be rooted in his listening to "The Telepathy Tapes" and it confirming/supporting some of his latent beliefs. But the Telepathy Tapes is utter nonsense and self delusion based on wishful thinking and the "Autism Parent" movement.
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
Simon Willison’s blog: https://simonwillison.net/.
How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?
My god, I wish I were that productive.
He actually addressed this recently: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3leuuhotnpk2...
I will add a +1 to your recommendation as well, his blog has been my favourite way to keep up with the AI landscape over the last 18 months. Just the right level of detail and technical depth for me
Yeah, honestly the answer is mainly not having a proper job (I don't have anyone who can tell me how to spend my time) combined with constructive procrastination: I've not been making nearly as much progress on my main projects over the past couple of months because there's been way too much stuff I want to write about.
I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten minutes, longer form stuff usually takes one or two hours.
I also deliberately lower my standards for blogging - I often skip conclusions, and I'll publish a piece when I'm still not happy with it (provided I've satisfied myself with the fact checking side of things - I won't dash something out if I'm not certain it's true, at least to the best of my ability.)
I'm hoping to improve my overall balance a lot for 2025. Deliberately ending my at least one post a day blogging streak is part of that: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/ending-a-year-long-post...
One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"?
The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things.
I'm wondering how you balance that.
Having relevant projects is key. My https://llm.datasette.io projects gives me the ideal playground for trying stuff out - any time a new API model comes out I can spin up a new plugin to for LLM, which is a great way to try the model with limited development time (most API plugins are a few dozen lines of code).
I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November and December, I'm trying to get it back for January.
Oh that's cool. We've been blogging about AI eng recently, but the project is often "try this idea/tool/library in order to write a blog post about it".
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
Let's not forget he's also discussing things on communities like HN, where I calculate 3 comments/day over the last month (based on a calc I just made, since I subscribe to his comments via https://hnrss.github.io/).
Hope he sees this and writes a post about it. I've been wondering the same thing.
The answer is almost always personal support / personal assistants.
There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc.
These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on.
(This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
I wish I had a personal staff like that!
We do have a couple of hours of cleaning help once a week but other than that my partner and I split the chores.
Sometimes, sure this is the case. I know a few big time artists who have dedicated teams that are always behind the scenes. But plenty of times it's not, as Simon himself pointed out below.
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.
https://unnecessaryinventions.com/about-ui/
I mean there could be other things in his life he's prioritizing less?
If I sit in front of a computer all the time I'm awake, I still wouldn't be able to be producing as much content as Simon Willison. My productivity would start to decline after 5~6 hours, and probably diminish after 8~9 hours. The consistency in his output is just magnificent and awe-inspiring.
Here's a few more, from my Feedly:
Julia Evans - https://jvns.ca/
Fabien Sanglard - https://fabiensanglard.net/
Rachel - http://rachelbythebay.com/w/
Bruce Eckel - https://bruceeckel.substack.com/ (old blog @ https://www.bruceeckel.com/)
Blobs in Games - https://simblob.blogspot.com/
Astrid dot tech - https://astrid.tech/
Brendan Gregg - https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/
Stargirl Flowers - https://blog.thea.codes/
https://www.experimental-history.com/
I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it.
Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons.
He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post:
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-br...
https://brr.fyi/ - Blog posts from someone who spent over a year in the Antarctic. Lots of interesting details about how the infrastructure works and what life is like working there.
I recall the author identifying female somewhere in all of their posts, but couldn't find the source when I had a quick look. Might be misremembering...
https://brr.fyi/posts/brr-wants-a-job#anonymity
I've edited my original post to be gender neutral. Thanks.
I’m enjoying Citation Needed by Molly White for its coverage of the crypto world: https://www.citationneeded.news
Serious question, how do you follow crypto news and not get kinda depressed about it?
I find the concept(s) and tech interesting, but crypto news is so full of drama and horrible people / acts it's hard to enjoy for me.
Vitalik’s blog is pretty top tier
Most coins/chains/platforms have some sort of newsletters. You can find most of this stuff by looking up the ticker on coingecko or similar.
There are dedicated “crypto news” platforms (e.g. coindesk)
If your news is full of drama and horrible people… thats on you tbh. The algorithms are primed for that sort of content, but curation is up to you.
It's not "my news", I'm not talking about some feed. It's what is on the sites that I've found ...
No skin in the game?
I say that because reading about crypto doesn't depress me at all.
You just laugh at it, the same way you laugh at the breathless AI grifters who have the exact same energy (and are largely the same people).
Shameless plug: https://techtalksweekly.io/
I publish one post a week with all the recently uploaded talks from nearly all software engineering conferences to save my readers time from endlessly scrolling through messy YT subscriptions and to reduce FOMO.
On top of that, each week, I pick a few talks that I think are a must-watch and write a short narrative to give some context.
Being someone who endlessly scrolls through YC and have FOMO, I'm gonna give your mailing list a go!
For economics:
* Noah Smith: fhttps://www.noahpinion.blog
* Since he's retired from his NYT column after 25 years, Krugman: https://paulkrugman.substack.com
For personal finance / business:
* https://awealthofcommonsense.com
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com
https://practicalbetterments.com A collection of one-off actions that improve your life continuously — however marginally.
https://stephango.com Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian, writes about the simplicity and usefulness of plain-test, plain but powerful ideas. @kepano at HN.
https://marksblogg.com Mark Litwintschik on GeoSpatial, Satellites, Machine Learning. @marklit at HN.
https://simonwillison.net and of course, Simon Willison’s daily blog with high-quality content. @simonw at HN.
Easy! https://www.astralcodexten.com/
I follow over 200 blogs, but this one has remained my favorite for years: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/.
New posts are rare - just once or twice a year - but every single article is a gem.
Amazing recommendation, thanks! I've only just read one post but the quality (visuals, depth, topic) is outstanding
Has to be Simon Willison’s blog
https://simonwillison.net/
Here are my favorites:
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss (https://jacobian.org/) [Engineering leadership, OSS]
- Anton Zhiyanov (https://antonz.org/) [SQL, Go, Python]
- Julia Evans (https://jvns.ca/) [SQL, Linux, Python, Go, Web]
- Brandur Leach (https://brandur.org/) [Postgres, Go, Ruby, Web]
- Brandon Rhodes (https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/) [Python, Astronomy, Linux]
- Nathanial J Smith (https://vorpus.org/blog/) [Python, Async, Linguistics]
I also write occasionally at https://rednafi.com.
Quite a fun read more often than not: https://dynomight.net/
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
I always enjoy reading Maggie Appleton's blog posts: https://maggieappleton.com
And I always learn from the very deep signal processing fun on Absorptions: https://www.windytan.com
Maggie Appleton's blog design is very appealing
Definitely enjoying Ludicity - https://ludic.mataroa.blog/
Not mentioned yet, Ethan Mollick's One Useful Thing: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/
It helped me get up to speed with gen AI as a graduate school professor and now his posts are the most useful ones I sent to others to help them get oriented.
Not new, but Josh W. Comeau's blog posts (https://www.joshwcomeau.com) on frontend and React are always next-level, you can tell there's passion in the details.
A conglomerate of BearBlog: https://bearblog.dev/discover/
Construction Physics:
https://www.construction-physics.com/
The one that says: "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel"
I've been compiling a list of my favourite blogs (and some other links) over the past few days. There are so many cool people doing cool stuff in their own little corners of the web.
https://vale.rocks/links
I've found myself more than once referred to Nat Bennett's Simpler Machines; most recently: Why doesn't everyone do XP?[0].
0. https://www.simplermachines.com/why-doesnt-everyone-do-xp/
Not new, but always enjoy occasionally checking what Rek and Devine are up to @ 100 rabbits: https://100r.co/
Jeremy Morrell apparently started a blog in 2024, wrote 3 posts for it, and each one of them would make my "top 5 blog posts of 2024" list.
https://jeremymorrell.dev/blog/
Simon Willison’s blog was going to be mine but apparently 2 people beat me to the recommendation.
In that case it's not really a blog but I will go with WEB CURIOS by Matt Muir
https://webcurios.co.uk/
I miss having a blog. I used to blog at https://standalone-sysadmin.com/ but it's been many years. I should get back into it.
https://ciechanow.ski/archives/
I've started relying on Michael Tsai's blog for Apple-centric news and insights: https://mjtsai.com/blog/
https://map.simonsarris.com/
Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
If by some chance you haven't stumbled upon Montaigne, I'd encourage you to try.
I’d like to hear more. What made you connect the two?
Interconnected by Kevin Xu
https://interconnected.blog/
https://rxjourney.com.ng
https://explaining.software/
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/
https://computer.rip/
https://myhsu.xyz/blog/ has some great posts explaining LLVM concepts
Mine is this one https://greptime.com/blogs/2024-05-07-error-rust Quite informative
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/
https://www.notboring.co/ Probably not new for most of people here but it's a breath of fresh air
Don't bother with this one - the latest post (The Return of Magic) is promoting a load of unscientific woo (The Telepathy Tapes). The author seems to seriously mean the title of the post literally.
I started reading the first half of that. I definitely sense what you’re sensing but I’m curious, what is it that you object to specifically?
Basically his whole "return of magic" premise seems to be rooted in his listening to "The Telepathy Tapes" and it confirming/supporting some of his latent beliefs. But the Telepathy Tapes is utter nonsense and self delusion based on wishful thinking and the "Autism Parent" movement.
https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepathy-tapes-is-tak...
https://blog.iusmentis.com/
Arnoud Engelfriet's blog about Dutch IT law (in Dutch).
Great list of blogs to bookmark and explore. Thanks
https://blog.breathingworld.com/
Because there must be somebody who isn't aware of it, Jason Kottke's blog is wonderful: https://kottke.org/
Another oldie-but-greaty is Metafilter: https://www.metafilter.com/
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
Engineer's Codex is great: https://read.engineerscodex.com/
https://imightbewrong.substack.com/
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
Cool people:
• https://tracydurnell.com
• https://www.benkuhn.net
• https://schmud.de
• https://brandur.org
• https://bytes.zone
• https://cassidoo.co
• https://www.chrbutler.com
• https://sive.rs
• https://fasterthanli.me
• https://akkartik.name
• https://www.todepond.com
• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com
• https://gwern.net
• https://interconnected.org
• https://jacobfilipp.com
• https://johnnywebber.com
• https://maggieappleton.com
• https://bernsteinbear.com
• https://pketh.org
• https://rachsmith.com
• https://sonnet.io
• https://stevenscrawls.com
• https://www.bookofjoe.com
• https://winnielim.org
---
Cool directories:
• https://blogs.hn
• https://ooh.directory
• https://deadsimplesites.com
• https://peopleandblogs.com
• https://nownownow.com
• https://blogroll.org
• https://kagi.com/smallweb
Things Magazine: https://www.thingsmagazine.net/
I've had more fun writing my blog this year than reading to be honest. https://kylebenzle.com
bowtiedbull
streetofwalls
[dead]
Shameless plug - i write at https://writervivek.com
But here is my list:
Https://daringfireball.net
https://stratechery.com
https://tldr.tech
among a few
Shameless plug time: - https://domofutu.substack.com/