Charity Majors

OH: "I turned off news alerts because alerts are only useful if they're actionable"

hard same

haha, thanks. :D

i would love to podcast! i'd like to write a followup in june-july on what has changed and what hasn't.

in the last year we've seen workflows emerge for fully generated durable code. i'm less convinced those workflows will replace ALL durable use cases.

@chadfowler.com i am supposed to be writing right now, but i've spent the last 2.5 hours reading the last few months of your writing. i can't believe i am just discovering it now! there is SO much good stuff here!

(yes, i've been under a rock since november ✍️📖☠️)

ooh? do tell! what are you seeing, what did you talk about?

i feel like that piece needs an update. maybe on its one year birthday i can find time to do that

“SaaS is dead. Everyone will just create what they need”

I think this underestimates what a PITA it is to create software.

Lots more short form video content is created today than ever before. The tools are now ubiquitous. The vast majority still just consume it.

My (hypothetical) SRECon26 keynote One year ago, Fred Hebert and I delivered the closing keynote at SRECon25. Looking back on it now, I can hardly connect with how I felt then. Here's what I'd say one year later.

it's almost time for SRECon26, which means it's been less than a year since @ferd.ca and i were delivering the closing keynote at SRECon25.

my perspective has changed A LOT since then, and the advice i would give has changed too. i wrote it up here.

charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/my-hypothe...

Agentic engineering is driving the cost of code to zero but the cost of good taste and product sense is going to go sky-high.

queued up, thanks for the rec!

grabbed it, thanks!

Disposable Code Is Here to Stay, but Durable Code Is What Runs the World Every day I seem to run into yet another post with someone solemnly opining that “writing code has never been the hardest part of software engineering. And hey, that’s smashing.

which one... this one? www.honeycomb.io/blog/disposa...

will i learn anything from this particular book, even if i'm fairly informed on this topic?

:hmmmyes:

omg.. i added that five days ago!

just ordered her new one from 2025, thanks for the rec!

oh my god, YES. the story about him designing those low overhanging bridges explicitly to keep buses out, because he associated bus-takers with Black people? OMG.

have you read the LBJ ones?? i put the third volume down at some point over the summer, but it's a "to return to" not "DNF".

*kelsey*.

have you read "Nuclear War: A Scenario", by Annie Jacobsen, or "Midnight in Chernobyl", Adam Higgenbotham? both are .. "good" seems like the wrong word, but "interesting"?

There was a whole rash of nuclear themed books that came out in 2025.

I have not!! adding to the list

ooooo, thank you!!! bookmarking

ooh -- okay, last one:

"Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America", by Beth Macy

I'll stop there, or I'll be going all night.

What books did you read in 2025 that lingered? Any recommendations?

What books should I queue up to read in 2026?

Two books I would have LOVED if the material had been a little less familiar:

"We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution", by Jill Lepore (amendments, flaws of FPTP voting)

"Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers", by Caroline Fraser (lead poisoning, brain damage)

I liked "Greenteeth", by Molly O'Neill. A debut novel, slight but fun and offbeat.

“I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains”, my first Chuck Klosterman book.

"A Fever in the Heartland", by Timothy Egan.

"Why Fish Don't Exist", by Lulu Miller.

Both Emily Nussbaum books on television.

On the fiction side of the house...I first read Megan Whalen Turner's "The Thief" when I was young. She just recently published the sixth and final book, and I read the whole series twice.

I believe it's the only thing she's written, and it's taken her twenty years. This, too, lingers.

I finally read Jia Tolentino's collection of essays, "Trick Mirror".

The first essay is terrible. I almost DNF'd. But they get better.

And one is absolutely unmissable. If you grew up reading Anne, Harriet, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Heidi, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, etc...read "Pure Heroines".

I went through an "adventure" phase, and the best of the bunch was probably:

“The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder”, by David Grann

This guy made enemies of the whole military brass and developed the OODA; respect.

"Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War", by Robert Coram

This book is deceptively simple. It isn't didactic or preachy, just follows real people who went down the QAnon hole, and how it affected those who love them.

“The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family”, by Jesselyn Cook

I still think about the couple in their eighties. 💔

Not just another depressing expose, I swear:

“The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket”, by Benjamin Lorr

Read before your next party:

“The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”, by Joseph Heinrich

"A brand is a promise", marketers say. When you have a "personal brand", it is predicated on you never learning, growing, or changing? 😟

Naomi Klein put so many of my anxieties into words in “Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World”.

Every book Klein has written has changed me. So did this one.

I read John Green's YA novels as a kid; meh? But hallelujah, he has found his calling. 🙌

I INHALED “The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet” and “Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection”, and have been pressing them on everyone.

If you like popular science and economics, but grind your teeth at the blinkered privilege of the "Freakanomics" crowd, may I submit: "Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work”, by Daryl Fairweather.

She's a Black, female economist who works in tech. It's fucking great.