By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/07/2026Again: the paradox falls away once you realize that personal software you write for yourself is *fundamentally different* from "production code" that other people have to use, maintain and improve. 16/ 2925
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/07/2026In an essay inspired by some thoughts on AI and mathematical theorem proving, Kellan Elliott-McCrea crystallizes this distinction in a really sharp way, bringing in Alex Kontorovich's idea of mathematical "canonization": laughingmeme.org/2026/06/30/c... 17/laughingmeme.orgCanonization and the OverhangDavid Bessis’s “The fall of the theorem economy” is ostensibly about LLMs and the pursuit of pure math, and I found it fascinating in its own right, even while I’m not qualified to evaluate a number o... 2281
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 02/07/2026> By canonization, I mean the process of taking a local, one-off formalization and turning it into library mathematics: general, reusable, coherent, efficient, and compatible with the rest… 18/ 1280
Mike Connor @mconnor.net · 04/07/2026This framing evokes Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month, where he contrasts the amount of work to develop a Program (single user on a single machine) against a Programming System Product (generalized and well integrated platform, 9x more complex to build). Coding is the easy part, design is hard. 0153
