I will add a +1 to your recommendation as well, his blog has been my favourite way to keep up with the AI landscape over the last 18 months. Just the right level of detail and technical depth for me
Yeah, honestly the answer is mainly not having a proper job (I don't have anyone who can tell me how to spend my time) combined with constructive procrastination: I've not been making nearly as much progress on my main projects over the past couple of months because there's been way too much stuff I want to write about.
I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten minutes, longer form stuff usually takes one or two hours.
I also deliberately lower my standards for blogging - I often skip conclusions, and I'll publish a piece when I'm still not happy with it (provided I've satisfied myself with the fact checking side of things - I won't dash something out if I'm not certain it's true, at least to the best of my ability.)
One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"?
The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things.
Having relevant projects is key. My https://llm.datasette.io projects gives me the ideal playground for trying stuff out - any time a new API model comes out I can spin up a new plugin to for LLM, which is a great way to try the model with limited development time (most API plugins are a few dozen lines of code).
I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November and December, I'm trying to get it back for January.
Oh that's cool. We've been blogging about AI eng recently, but the project is often "try this idea/tool/library in order to write a blog post about it".
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
Let's not forget he's also discussing things on communities like HN, where I calculate 3 comments/day over the last month (based on a calc I just made, since I subscribe to his comments via https://hnrss.github.io/).
The answer is almost always personal support / personal assistants.
There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc.
These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on.
(This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
Sometimes, sure this is the case. I know a few big time artists who have dedicated teams that are always behind the scenes. But plenty of times it's not, as Simon himself pointed out below.
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.
If I sit in front of a computer all the time I'm awake, I still wouldn't be able to be producing as much content as Simon Willison. My productivity would start to decline after 5~6 hours, and probably diminish after 8~9 hours. The consistency in his output is just magnificent and awe-inspiring.
https://brr.fyi/ - Blog posts from someone who spent over a year in the Antarctic. Lots of interesting details about how the infrastructure works and what life is like working there.
I recall the author identifying female somewhere in all of their posts, but couldn't find the source when I had a quick look.
Might be misremembering...
I publish one post a week with all the recently uploaded talks from nearly all software engineering conferences to save my readers time from endlessly scrolling through messy YT subscriptions and to reduce FOMO.
On top of that, each week, I pick a few talks that I think are a must-watch and write a short narrative to give some context.
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
Not new, but Josh W. Comeau's blog posts (https://www.joshwcomeau.com) on frontend and React are always next-level, you can tell there's passion in the details.
The one that says: "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't
solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel"
I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it.
Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons.
He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post:
It helped me get up to speed with gen AI as a graduate school professor and now his posts are the most useful ones I sent to others to help them get oriented.
I've been compiling a list of my favourite blogs (and some other links) over the past few days. There are so many cool people doing cool stuff in their own little corners of the web.
Eli Bendersky just has a nice hodgepodge of different things. You can tell when he dives into something new when you see a small series pop up. https://eli.thegreenplace.net/
Sometimes, someone’s writings hit just right. This is one of them. A man building is home, investing in the people around him and telling tales. Yet it’s so good!
Written by guys in leisure, both successful in their primary vocations, not falling in any stoic traps. Something like that.(Separated by couple hundred years, oh well.)
Don't bother with this one - the latest post (The Return of Magic) is promoting a load of unscientific woo (The Telepathy Tapes). The author seems to seriously mean the title of the post literally.
Basically his whole "return of magic" premise seems to be rooted in his listening to "The Telepathy Tapes" and it confirming/supporting some of his latent beliefs. But the Telepathy Tapes is utter nonsense and self delusion based on wishful thinking and the "Autism Parent" movement.
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?
My god, I wish I were that productive.
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