Topics

A question, the views people here take on it, and their own words under each. Our reading of what the claims have in common; the quotes are theirs.

Human qualities: what top voices say about curiosity, taste, creativity, empathy, ambition, agency, optimism, courage, discipline, humility and patience.

Mental models: inversion, circles of competence, second-order thinking and more, in the words of the people who use them.

• How should software engineers be interviewed?

  Whiteboard algorithm questions became the standard filter; the dispute is over what they measure and what replaces them.

  16 people · 7 views · most recent 11 Oct 2026

• Which mental models help you think better?

  Thinking tools borrowed from many fields, each held in the words of the people who argue for it.

  72 people · 17 views · most recent 5 Oct 2026

• Can a machine be conscious?

  An old question that got loud again in October 2026: is anything we have built conscious, and could it ever be?

  23 people · 9 views · most recent 4 Oct 2026

• What is a PM for, now that building is cheap?

  Deciding what to build matters more now; they split on whether a PM or the builders should do it.

  27 people · 3 views · most recent 29 Sept 2026

• Why is ambition important?

  15 people · 4 views · most recent 29 Sept 2026

• What is taste, and why does it matter now?

  29 people · 9 views · most recent 27 Sept 2026

• Which mental models should a designer think with?

  Eleven ideas designers keep coming back to, each held in the words of the people who state it.

  53 people · 11 views · most recent 27 Sept 2026

• Why be optimistic?

  15 people · 4 views · most recent 27 Sept 2026

• Will AI take the jobs?

  Some expect AI to remove whole classes of work soon; others call that the overreach.

  18 people · 4 views · most recent 27 Sept 2026

• When does an abstraction help, and when does it hurt?

  They argue over when to share code, whether the classic clean-code rules help, and what hiding the details costs.

  11 people · 4 views · most recent 25 Sept 2026

• Where does creativity come from?

  24 people · 5 views · most recent 25 Sept 2026

• What are tests for, and how much testing is enough?

  They agree tests buy confidence and split on which tests, how many, and whether agents change the answer.

  16 people · 5 views · most recent 24 Sept 2026

• Why does agency matter?

  12 people · 4 views · most recent 24 Sept 2026

• Rent the cloud or own the servers?

  They argue over what the cloud really saves, and where the next wave of software will run.

  7 people · 4 views · most recent 22 Sept 2026

• Why does humility matter?

  9 people · 4 views · most recent 20 Sept 2026

• Why is it harder to simplify than to add?

  Most here say simplicity is subtraction; they part over why it is hard, and when less becomes too little.

  31 people · 5 views · most recent 20 Sept 2026

• Is patience a virtue?

  13 people · 3 views · most recent 18 Sept 2026

• What makes a good life?

  Hardly anyone here says a good life means feeling good; they part on what it means instead.

  55 people · 15 views · most recent 18 Sept 2026

• What does courage take?

  14 people · 4 views · most recent 17 Sept 2026

• Is discipline the answer?

  21 people · 3 views · most recent 15 Sept 2026

• Do static types make software better?

  They split on whether types prevent bugs, or mostly buy better tools, and on how strict they should be.

  11 people · 4 views · most recent 14 Sept 2026

• How dangerous is AI, and how soon?

  They argue over whether the danger can be reasoned about, what to watch, and when it arrives.

  19 people · 4 views · most recent 13 Sept 2026

• Do we shrink our way out of the climate problem, or grow our way out?

  All agree emissions must fall; they disagree about whether that means less output or cheaper energy.

  7 people · 4 views · most recent 3 Sept 2026

• How cheap does solar get, and what does that change?

  Panel prices keep falling with every doubling; they disagree about what follows from that.

  6 people · 5 views · most recent 3 Sept 2026

• Where does the energy come from, and what is stopping it?

  Once about which technology would win, now mostly about what can actually get built.

  11 people · 4 views · most recent 3 Sept 2026

• Can a rich country still build things?

  Not whether the projects are wanted, but what stops them: permits, lost capability, or the rules themselves.

  10 people · 4 views · most recent 31 Aug 2026

• What does the interface become when a model is on the other side?

  Some expect the interface to disappear into stated intent; others expect the buttons to stay.

  14 people · 4 views · most recent 28 Aug 2026

• What makes a design good?

  Most agree good design is less; they part over what the remainder is for.

  19 people · 5 views · most recent 28 Aug 2026

• What do coding agents change about software work?

  All agree the tools got good; they split on what that changes and what a person is still for.

  9 people · 4 views · most recent 26 Aug 2026

• Who should design software, and how?

  Making and deciding have drifted apart, and they disagree about the cure.

  15 people · 5 views · most recent 26 Aug 2026

• What makes psychotherapy work?

  They all treat people for a living and disagree about which part of the hour does the work.

  7 people · 5 views · most recent 25 Aug 2026

• Why is curiosity important?

  13 people · 4 views · most recent 24 Aug 2026

• Does public debt cost what we think it does?

  Cheap debt looked settled until rates moved, and two people here changed their minds in writing.

  4 people · 3 views · most recent 21 Aug 2026

• Do you become the people you spend time with?

  Most agree the people around you change you; they part on what to do about it.

  10 people · 5 views · most recent 16 Aug 2026

• Does empathy make us better?

  13 people · 4 views · most recent 1 Jul 2026

• Should software be one program or many small services?

  Most say start with one program; they differ on when to split it, and why.

  5 people · 3 views · most recent 1 Apr 2026

• Do tariffs do what they are imposed to do?

  They have counted what tariffs do and disagree about what the counting shows.

  5 people · 4 views · most recent 24 Feb 2026

Subjects, read as views

A subject is not one question. These are the handful of live questions each name actually stands for, with the claims filed under them.

• investing

  Money people on the AI build-out and on whether a portfolio is something you build or survive..

  5 views · 51 claims from 6 people · most recent 6 Sept 2026

• Anthropic

  Its coding agent is the one people reach for; the argument is over its benchmarks and its safety story..

  4 views · 14 claims from 9 people · most recent 3 Sept 2026

• Omarchy

  A weekend project became a Linux distribution, and the claims run from leaving macOS to who may change it..

  5 views · 24 claims from 3 people · most recent 29 Aug 2026

• design

  They agree good design is less, and split over who should do it and what a model changes..

  5 views · 55 claims from 24 people · most recent 28 Aug 2026

• product management

  Building got cheap, so deciding what to build is the job; they split on whose call it is..

  3 views · 11 claims from 4 people · most recent 10 Aug 2026

• language learning

  Between them they speak fifty-odd languages, and still disagree about how anyone learns one..

  5 views · 33 claims from 6 people · most recent 20 Jul 2026