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Chris Wellons

What Chris Wellons thinks about design

@chris-wellons · 12 positions · 0 changes of mind

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.

Everything they publish, on ppll ↗

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.

5 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Chris Wellons has said — not written or endorsed by them.

5 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

  1. Our readingSoftware built under tight hardware constraints tends to have faster, more responsive UI than software built without such limits.

    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

  2. 5 months earlier

  3. Our readingHow easily an AI agent navigates a UI is objective evidence of how well- or poorly-designed that UI is.

    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

  4. 3 weeks earlier

  5. Our readingAI tools are now highly effective at generating UI code from a rough natural-language description

    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

  7. Our readingFrontier AI models still cannot handle certain deep technical implementation details without human guidance

    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

  8. 9 days earlier

  9. Our readingAI will make hand-written code a luxury only the wealthy can afford to produce.

    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