Chris Wellons
Software engineer who writes about low-level and systems programming at nullprogram.com; author of the Elfeed feed reader, the Endlessh SSH tarpit and Enchive.
Chris Wellons did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Archaic line-ending conversion features in tools have caused far more harm than good over the years.
Their wordsOver the years, archaic line-ending features have caused far more harm than good
↗tugz: a new deflate library with three applicationsnullprogram.com
- 9 days earlier
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Their wordsThis sort of bespoke, written-to-order software is likely the future of software. Why bother with one-site-fits-all when an exactly-sized solution has the same cost?
↗A new, bespoke static site generator to replace Jekyllnullprogram.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsTwo years ago I said that AI-generated code was too poor to be practical. That changed by the end of 2025.
↗A new, bespoke static site generator to replace Jekyllnullprogram.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
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Our reading
CMake tooling is missing a linter that could statically catch most CMakeLists.txt mistakes.
developer toolssoftware quality
Their wordsThe world needs a good CMake linter, which could catch most cases statically.
↗What's been going on in w64devkit the past yearnullprogram.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
C11's threads addition to the C standard was under-scrutinized and should not have been added.
Their wordsThis C standard addition did not get nearly the attention is needed and should have been cut (par for the course).
↗What's been going on in w64devkit the past yearnullprogram.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsStrap a frontier AI into a good coding harness, show it what's broken, give it all the sources (source.tar), and ~15 minutes later I have a patch.
↗What's been going on in w64devkit the past yearnullprogram.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
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Their wordsTargeting old 16-bit computers, the authors couldn't afford to build a sloppy, wasteful UI, and so by modern standards the game UI is remarkably fast and responsive.
↗A custom virtual machine for the Stars! 4X gamenullprogram.com
- 5 months earlier
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Our reading
AI coding assistance now lets a programmer complete in a day work that used to take weeks.
LLMscoding agentscode generation
Their wordsThough now that I can accomplish ~3 weeks of old-way work in a new-way day, this sort of project becomes that much easier to start and finish.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThe most popular use case is code-signing with self-signed certificates, but that actually makes everything worse.
↗My brave new code-signing worldnullprogram.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsthe AI breezes through the GitHub UI, but struggles through the Azure portal - objective evidence of how awful it is.
↗My brave new code-signing worldnullprogram.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Our reading
AI tools are now highly effective at generating UI code from a rough natural-language description
developer toolsdesignvibe codingcode generation
Their wordsThis is just one of many situations I've used AI the past month for UI development, and it's been shockingly effective.
↗dcmake: a new CMake debugger UInullprogram.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsThis took some special care, in particular avoiding any C++ standard library I/O functionality. Current frontier AI cannot handle this detail on their own.
↗dcmake: a new CMake debugger UInullprogram.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 9 days earlier
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Their wordsThere's a huge, growing gap between open weight models and the frontier. Models you can run yourself are toys.
↗2026 has been the most pivotal year in my career… and it's only Marchnullprogram.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsAI is now highly skilled at programming, and better than me at almost every programming task, with inhumanly-low defect rates.
↗2026 has been the most pivotal year in my career… and it's only Marchnullprogram.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsAI makes programming so cheap that only the rich will write code by hand.
↗2026 has been the most pivotal year in my career… and it's only Marchnullprogram.com 3rd of 3 in this piece