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">
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="push-double"></span> <span class="pull-double">“</span>Talking to Myself”. I won­der if Raphael Mudge (AtD’s au­thor) had a sim­i­lar mo­ti­va­tion.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>on­line</em> so my users can un­der­stand my in­ten­tions.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Bonus Points</h2>
<p>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.</p>

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

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

Why I Talk to Myself

<h1>Hacker News, sans <span class="small-caps">AI</span></h1>
<p>I like Hacker News, but I do not love that so much of it has turned into dis­cus­sion of a sin­gle topic: <span class="small-caps">AI</span>. So, I have cre­ated my own ver­sion.
A ver­sion of Hacker News, with­out <span class="small-caps">AI</span>.</p>
<p><a href="/hnsansai">HNSansAI</a> pulls from the of­ﬁ­cial Hacker News <span class="small-caps">API</span>, looks through the con­tent of each ar­ti­cle, and dis­cards any that men­tion a term re­lated to<span class="push-double"></span> <span class="pull-double">“</span><span class="small-caps">AI</span><span class="push-double"></span><span class="pull-double">”</span>. That in­cludes stuff like:</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="pull-double">“</span>OpenAI”</li>
<li><span class="pull-double">“</span>Anthropic”</li>
<li><span class="pull-double">“</span>Copilot”</li>
<li>“<span class="small-caps">LLM</span>”</li>
<li>…and many more.</li>
</ul>

I like HackerNews, but I don't love that so much of it has turned into discussion of a single topic: AI. This is a version of HackerNews, filtered to remove any article focusing on __AI__. Refreshes about every ten minutes.

<p>I like HackerNews, but I don’t love that so much of it has turned into dis­cus­sion of a sin­gle topic: <span class="small-caps">AI</span>. This is a ver­sion of HackerNews, ﬁl­tered to re­move any ar­ti­cle fo­cus­ing on <strong><span class="small-caps">AI</span></strong>. Refreshes about every ten min­utes.</p>

Hacker News sans AI

<h1>Linkarzu: Harper Is Getting Better</h1>
<p>Linkarzu’s re­cent video about Harper is a great primer on what it can do if you spend a ton of time in Neovim (like I do). It’s true: Harper is get­ting bet­ter.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="400" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/he8V6gj9IG0?si=mbw6q8m3jqi1qhSf" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Linkarzu's recent video about Harper is a great primer on what it can do.

<p>Linkarzu’s re­cent video about Harper is a great primer on what it can do.</p>

Elijah Potter

Linkarzu: Harper Is Getting Better

Comments

Other Stuff

Do Not Type Your Notes

Why I Talk to Myself

Hacker News sans AI