Markov Chains Are the Original Language Models

It didn't work for me, and if you reading this, it probably won't work for you either.

It did­n’t work for me, and if you read­ing this, it prob­a­bly won’t work for you ei­ther.

Do Not Type Your Notes

<h1>Why I Talk to Myself</h1>
<img src="/images/bike_sidewalk.webp" alt="My bike broke down. Luckily, I had my camera">
Each week I sit down and re­ﬂect on what I’ve learned. I think about which of my ef­forts have helped the Harper en­deavor, and which have harmed it. It’s not easy, but I think it’s one of the best habits I’ve built. More ac­cu­rately, it’s one of the best habits <a href="https://ma.tt">Matt</a> has en­cour­aged me to build.
When I re­ally think about it, I’m re­minded of the orig­i­nal <a href="https://blog.afterthedeadline.com/">After the Deadline blog</a>, which co­in­ci­den­tally also had a cat­e­gory called “Talking to Myself”. I won­der if Raphael Mudge (AtD’s au­thor) had a sim­i­lar mo­ti­va­tion.
I talk to my­self to ﬁnd the weak­nesses in Harper’s mis­sion and fo­cus my at­ten­tion on what mat­ters. It is an ef­ﬁ­cient way to get from <a href="https://ma.tt/2025/05/sharing-levels/">layer one to layer ﬁve</a>. It can help get other main­tain­ers on the same page and build a body of knowl­edge that can be linked to from any­where.
Not wor­ry­ing about keep­ing in­for­ma­tion locked-down is one of the more beau­ti­ful parts of work­ing in pub­lic. Open source code would be noth­ing with­out sim­i­larly open source knowl­edge. I talk to my­self on­line so my users can un­der­stand my in­ten­tions.
In many senses, we are not un­like moths. We are drawn to the lights of dis­trac­tion, hype, and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. For me, set­ting up check­points to stop and re­ﬂect has been an ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent from these lights. In fact, I think each minute for which I stop and think has paid it­self back three times over in time sav­ings. If I can bet­ter al­lo­cate my time and en­ergy, I can avoid do­ing re­dun­dant work pur­su­ing point­less goals.
<h2>Bonus Points</h2>
A <a href="./markov_chains_are_the_original_language_models">few</a> of my <a href="./local-first_software_is_easier_to_scale">ar­ti­cles</a> have be­come pop­u­lar on sites like Hacker News and Reddit. We’ve got­ten quite a few Harper in­stal­la­tions from links on these ar­ti­cles. I would never rely on this kind of blog­ging as a source of ad­ver­tis­ing, but it is nice to see it help spread the word.

It's not easy, but I think it's one of the best habits I've ever built.

It’s not easy, but I think it’s one of the best habits I’ve ever built.

Why I Talk to Myself

After spend­ing a few days dis­cussing and learn­ing from Automattic’s Chief Quality Ofﬁcer (Lance Willet), I’ve pre­pared a ﬁrst draft of <a href="https://writewithharper.com/docs/contributors/testing-strategy">Harper’s test­ing strat­egy.</a>
I hope you all take a look. I am very in­ter­ested in any and all feed­back you may have.

Elijah Potter

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Markov Chains Are the Original Language Models

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