anildash.com

Latest posts

• Codeless: From idea to software

  Jan 22, 2026

  Something actually new? There’s finally been a big leap forward in coding tech unlocked by AI — not just “it’s doing some work for me”, but “we couldn’t do this before”. What’s new are a few smart systems that let coders control fleets of dozens of coding bots, all working in tandem, to swarm over a list of tasks and to deliver entire features, or even entire sets of features, just from a plain-En

• Why We Speak

  Jan 26, 2026

  I've been working in and around the technology industry for a long time. Depending on how you count, it's 20 or 30 years. (I first started getting paid to put together PCs with a screwdriver when I was a teenager, but there isn't a good way to list that on LinkedIn.) And as soon as I felt like I was pretty sure that I was going to be able to pay the next month's rent without having to eat ramen no

• A Codeless Ecosystem, or hacking beyond vibe coding

  Jan 27, 2026

  There's been a remarkable leap forward in the ability to orchestrate coding bots, making it possible for ordinary creators to command dozens of AI bots to build software without ever having to directly touch code. The implications of this kind of evolution are potentially extraordinary, as outlined in that first set of notes about what we could call "codeless" software. But now it's worth looking

• New York Tech at 30: the Crossroads

  Feb 04, 2026

  This past week, over a series of events, the New York tech community celebrated the 30th anniversary of a nebulous idea described as “Silicon Alley”, the catch-all term for our greater collective of creators and collaborators, founders and funders, inventors and investors, educators and entrepreneurs and electeds, activists and architects and artists. Some of the parties or mixers have been typica

• There's no such thing as "tech" (Ten years later)

  Feb 06, 2026

  Ten years ago I wrote that there is no “technology industry”. It’s more true than ever. There is no “tech”. There’s no such thing as “a FAANG company”. There is almost nothing in common between the very largest tech companies and the next several hundred biggest companies that happen to create tech platforms. Whatever shorthand we use for the biggest tech companies, they almost never have much in

• Coding agents as the new compilers

  Feb 12, 2026

  In each successive generation of code creation thus far, we’ve abstracted away the prior generation over time. Usually, only a small percentage of coders still work on the lower layers of the stack that used to be the space where everyone was working. I’ve been coding long enough that people were still creating code in assembly when I started (though I was never any good at it!), though I started

• Launch it 3 times

  Feb 14, 2026

  I wanted to share one of the bits of advice that I find myself most frequently giving to teams when they’re working on a product, or founders who are creating a new company: launch it three times. What I mean by that is, it often takes more than one time before your idea actually resonates or sticks with the people you’re trying to reach. Sometimes it takes more than twice! And when I say that you

• How did we end up threatening our kids’ lives with AI?

  Feb 18, 2026

  I have to begin by warning you about the content in this piece; while I won’t be dwelling on any specifics, this will necessarily be a broad discussion about some of the most disturbing topics imaginable. I resent that I have to give you that warning, but I’m forced to because of the choices that the Big AI companies have made that affect children. I don’t say this lightly. But this is the point w

• Taking action against AI harms

  Feb 24, 2026

  In my last piece, I talked about the harms that AI is visiting on children through the irresponsible choices made by the platforms creating those products. While we dove a bit into the incentives and institutional pressures that cause those companies to make such wildly irresponsible decisions, what we haven’t yet reckoned with is how we hold these companies accountable. Often, people tell me they

• Talking through the tech reckoning

  Feb 26, 2026

  Many of the topics that we’ve all been discussing about technology these days seem to matter so much more, and the stakes have never been higher. So, I’ve been trying to engage with more conversations out in the world, in hopes of communicating some of the ideas that might not get shared from more traditional voices in technology. These recent conversations have been pretty well received, and I ho

• A Cookie for Dario? — Anthropic and selling death

  Feb 28, 2026

  A big tech headline this week is Anthropic (makers of Claude, widely regarded as one of the best LLM platforms) resisting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s calls to modify their platform in order to enable it to support his commission of war crimes. As has become clear this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has declined to do so. The administration couches the request as an attempt to use the tec

• Why Apple’s move to video could endanger podcasting's greatest power

  Feb 28, 2026

  TL;DR: Apple is adding support for video podcasts to their podcast app Podcasts are built on an open standard, which is why they aren’t controlled by a bad algorithm and don’t have ads that spy on you Apple’s new system for video podcasts breaks with the old podcast standard, and forces creators to host their video clips with a few selected companies The stakes are even higher because all the indi