Last time I wrote about why most people outside tech hate AI, and what builders should do about it. This is the personal version of that argument. I’ve been writing calculator software for nearly 30 years. What drove me to write PowerOne in the first place was a deep desire to stop adapting to the…
Nilay Patel wrote a widely read piece in The Verge this week about the disconnect between the tech community and everyone else, especially around AI. Most people outside tech hate AI, he points out, and their opinion is getting worse with time. I see this at home. My daughters, both Gen Z, are massively against…
The fear: LLMs will do everything. There won’t be any need for anyone to ever write a new product again! The world will be ruled by bespoke software products written by every Tom, Dick and Harry with a laptop! R.I.P. Good Times! Wow. Just wow. Relax folks. Deep breath. Step back from the ledge. Yes,…
Co-founder and CTO of TrueMath, Elia Freedman, posted this on his personal blog. We thought it was worth reposting here. Enjoy! Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to observe a lot of AI-assisted software development. In my experience there was a clear shift in November 2025 when Claude Opus 4.5 launched. What…
Is AI Math solved? Maybe you think it is if Math Olympiad results mean “solved.” But what if “solved” means ready for reliable, production scale utilization?
(This is a repost of Elia’s original blog post at eliainsider.com) When I started developing software, the operating system handed off control to an application, the application did its thing, and when done, handed back control to the operating system. These early systems were largely single-application and linear. Control flow was simple and direct. The…
I didn’t get bad code because an LLM can’t write software. I got bad LLM code because I gave it too much freedom. I was working on a new feature for TrueMath this past week. I’d already written it before, but it lived behind an admin wall, and I wanted to elevate it for customers….
How Software Development Really Works I’ve been developing software for 40 years. I’m mostly self-taught and because of that (and my personality), I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the process of developing software, not just the code. While most of my software development has been in small companies I founded or personal side projects, my…
Bill Kelly and I have known each other for over 20 years. Across countless conversations about software, usability, and the mechanics of getting things right, one thing eluded us: the right project to build together. Bill started playing with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to write documents. Because old habits die hard*, I kept asking math…
I’ve sat at tables during funding pitches and heard a senior leader ask, “How did you determine that number?” The last answer the senior leader wants to hear is, “I don’t know.” Or worse: “I did the math and got a different answer.” In finance, this is even more dangerous. It’s a regulated industry, and…