Blog #0196: Storytelling in a Post-Truth World
2026-04-10
• Matthew Sinclair
Facts alone were never enough. In a world saturated with data-free slop, narrative is how you carry truth through the noise.
Blog Posts
Blog #0195: Taste as Art
2026-04-03
• Matthew Sinclair
When anyone can generate anything, the scarce skill is knowing what's good. Curation, filtering, and editorial judgement become the primary creative acts.
Blog #0194: The Time Cost of How Is Zero
2026-03-27
• Matthew Sinclair
Agentic coding pushes the implementation cost of software towards zero. The value shifts from how to build something towards why and what. But this is just the latest rung on a very old ladder.
Blog #0193: Learning and Dreaming
2026-03-06
• Matthew Sinclair
Cross-entropy loss, the Adam optimizer, and autoregressive generation — training a GPT in Elixir
Blog #0192: How Tokens Talk to Each Other
2026-03-05
• Matthew Sinclair
Self-attention, multi-head projections, and KV caching — the core of the transformer
Blog #0191: From Letters to Logits
2026-03-04
• Matthew Sinclair
From tokenization through linear algebra to the GPT model, all in pure Elixir
Blog #0190: What If Numbers Could Remember?
2026-03-03
• Matthew Sinclair
Building autograd from scratch in Elixir — every number remembers where it came from
Blog #0189: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Highlander Rule
2026-03-02
• Matthew Sinclair
A simple rule with a pithy name turns out to be surprisingly effective at keeping agentic coding on the rails
Blog #0188: On Knowing What Code to Throw Away
2026-03-01
• Matthew Sinclair
Agentic coding has inverted the job — from knowing what to write, to knowing what to throw away
Blog #0187: A Few Things I've Been Working On
2026-02-02
• Matthew Sinclair
A catch-up on Laksa, Prolix, and what's been keeping me busy
Blog #0186: What We Let Machines Do
2026-02-02
• Matthew Sinclair
A framework for thinking about AI autonomy - from analysis to embodied behaviour
Blog #0185: (Almost) 52 Things I Learned in 2025
2026-01-15
• Matthew Sinclair
A big list of 52+ things that I learned each week in 2025
Introducing Utilz: A Simple Script Framework for macOS
2025-11-13
• Matthew Sinclair
A simple bash framework for organizing personal automation scripts across machines
RLWRAP and Elixir: A Pragmatic Approach to CLI Readline Support
2025-08-12
• Matthew Sinclair
How to add professional readline features to your Elixir CLI without losing your mind
The CTO Review: Using Socratic Dialog with AI for Better Technical Decisions
2025-08-11
• Matthew Sinclair
How a structured conversation between personas can transform your technical design process
Why Elixir? A Rebuttal to Common Misconceptions
2025-07-08
• Matthew Sinclair
Why Elixir is not just a good platform for modern development, but a great one - addressing common misconceptions
Making Emacs Appear in macOS Finder's Open With Menu for Markdown Files
2025-06-13
• Matthew Sinclair
How to fix the issue where Emacs doesn't appear in Finder's Open With menu for markdown files on macOS
Kids and Smartphones
2025-04-28
• Matthew Sinclair
Why the problem with kids and smartphones is software, not hardware
Why LLM-Powered Programming is More Mech Suit Than Artificial Human
2025-04-21
• Matthew Sinclair
How LLM-powered programming tools amplify developer capabilities rather than replace them
What if we taxed advertising?
2025-04-08
• Matthew Sinclair
What if, rather than banning advertising outright, we taxed it instead?
Introducing Nether (ØNTHR)
2025-04-01
• Matthew Sinclair
Introducing Nether (ØNTHR) — The World's First Perfect Stablecoin
I'm a software engineer ~ what next? Mid-Series Update and Next Steps
2025-03-17
• Matthew Sinclair
Mid-Series Update and Next Steps for the 'I'm a software engineer ~ what next?' podcast
ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek vs Creativity (part 3)
2025-01-29
• Matthew Sinclair
Part 3 in the ongoing discussion about the 'creativity' of LLMs
Blog #0173: 52+ Things I Learned in 2024
2024-12-27
• Matthew Sinclair
A big list of 52+ things that I learned each week in 2024
Blog 0172: After 3 months gardening leave and a 2,300 mile trip around the UK, Quantum Fax Machine Reading Lists are back!
2024-11-13
• Matthew Sinclair
I drove >2,300 miles around the UK from London to Land's End to John o'Groats and back to London in a VW Californian camper and lived to tell the tale.
Blog #0171: 20240619 Blog 0171 Will LLMs Ever Completely Take Over Coding from Human Software Engineers?
2024-06-19
• Matthew Sinclair
Writing software is 20% syntax and 80% wisdom. Which bit do you think LLMs are good at?
Blog #0170: Podcast: Imagine This...
2024-06-03
• Matthew Sinclair
When AI comes for Knowledge Workers
Blog #0169: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Creativity (part 2)
2024-03-13
• Matthew Sinclair
How creative are ChatGPT and Claude? I made them (re)take the “Divergent Association Task” to find out. The results are (again) surprising.
Blog #0168: FinovateEurope 2024 Summary Insights Demos
2024-02-28
• Matthew Sinclair
I went to Finovate and listened to 35 fintech demos so you didn't have to
Blog #0167: A few thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro after a 20 min test drive
2024-02-23
• Matthew Sinclair
I wore an AVP on my head for 20 mins and lived to tell the tale
Blog #166: Six Simple Questions to Ask to Ensure You Are Building a Great Product
2024-02-22
• Matthew Sinclair
An intentionally simple framework to help early discussions about what to build
Blog #165: Broad work vs deep work
2024-02-08
• Matthew Sinclair
Finding a balance between remote and in-person work
Blog #164: Three Reading Lists (2023)
2024-02-07
• Matthew Sinclair
Announcing three new reading lists for 2024.
Blog #163: Elixir Reading List (2023)
2024-01-16
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in the Elixir ecosystem in 2023.
Blog #162: Machine Learning Review December 2023
2024-01-15
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in December 2023.
Blog #161: Machine Learning Review November 2023
2024-01-14
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in November 2023.
Blog #160: Machine Learning Review October 2023
2024-01-13
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in October 2023.
Blog #159: Machine Learning Review September 2023
2024-01-12
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in September 2023.
Blog #158: Machine Learning Review August 2023
2024-01-11
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in August 2023.
Blog #157: Machine Learning Review July 2023
2024-01-10
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in July 2023.
Blog #156: Machine Learning Review June 2023
2024-01-09
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in June 2023.
Blog #155: Machine Learning Review May 2023
2024-01-08
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in May 2023.
Blog #154: Machine Learning Review April 2023
2024-01-07
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in April 2023.
Blog #153: Machine Learning Review March 2023
2024-01-06
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in March 2023.
Blog #152: Machine Learning Review February 2023
2024-01-05
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in February 2023.
Blog #151: Machine Learning Review January 2023
2024-01-04
• Matthew Sinclair
A review of all of the interesting things that happened in machine intelligence in January 2023.
Blog #150: Looking back month-by-month at everything that happened in machine learning in 2023
2024-01-03
• Matthew Sinclair
Looking back at everything I learned in machine learning in 2023
Blog #0149: 52+ Things I Learned in 2023
2024-01-02
• Matthew Sinclair
A big list of 52+ things that I learned each week in 2023