iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This is why you gotta read the code when you're working on an app. Yeah LLMs do cool stuff, but then they randomly inject emoji into your app that has a design system with icons. Naughty Claude.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 22/09/2026

Specialization gets a lot of attention. Curiosity matters more. The engineers who keep getting better are the ones who keep asking questions, not the ones who already know the most. Curiosity compounds. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/09/2026

I'll be at Rails World Austin next week. Do you have a design or UX problem that's frustrating you? I'll have my roll of architectural trace and we can sketch through it together. Looking forward to talking with everyone on UX, Rails View, Frontend, Design Systems...

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 15/09/2026

"AI is the end of programming." "Nothing is going to change." Both miss what's happening. AI gets us to 80% in 20% of the time. The remaining 20% is where the work still lives. It's the next abstraction layer, not the end. www.indierails.com/72 `#AI`

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 04/09/2026

I've been building PatchVault in Rails since 2013, and the build speed has gone pretty fast since the Opus release right before Christmas last year. A good process of PRD + tickets reviewed by Aaron Francis' "counselors" library and a lot of bin/ci coverage.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 03/09/2026

If your app is vanilla Tailwind UI with the default purple, that's not a brand. Tailwind is a toolkit, a starting point, not a finishing point. Brand has to show up somewhere beyond the logo in the corner. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 01/09/2026

Most Rails apps get built data-model-first. The shift is to start with the user's story: who shows up, what they're trying to do, how easily they can do it. The data model follows. Not the other way around. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 07/07/2026

In 2014, Sam Crigman caught me on the escalator at RailsConf Chicago. He wanted to talk Procore UX. That conversation turned into setting the operating model for design embedded in scrum teams. Domain knowledge mattered. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 30/06/2026

Engineers tell me "I can't design." I push back. Route structure, response payload, field naming. All of it shapes the user's experience. You're designing in code whether you call it that or not. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 23/06/2026

Users don't read. They scan. The squint test takes 5 seconds: squint at your screen, see what jumps out, that's what the user notices first. If your CTA has the same visual weight as everything else, it's invisible. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/06/2026

The most common Rails UI problem is key-value pair dumping. Half the labels in any Rails app are doing zero work, because a dollar sign already tells you it's a price. Cut the labels the data speaks for. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 21/05/2026

Watching the storms over Afton from Stony Point.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 12/05/2026

Need to take more pictures. Been a crazy spring.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 27/04/2026

This is a slide from my talk this week at Blue Ridge Ruby connecting Permaculture with Sustainable Software Development. Lots of cute animals and lots of fun concepts to help you shift frame on how we approach this work. I hope to see you there!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 09/04/2026

Couldn't happen to a nicer piece of software. Buh bye, Publisher!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/12/2025

Merry Christmas! Kransekake complete! Not as perfect as the formal bakers but I’m happy. Much better than last year’s!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 24/12/2025

So it begins! Stollen done, pies wrapped, (all gluten free!), smoker going with a ham from our friends farm and brisket from our own, and kransekake is up next!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 18/10/2025

Speaking at 10:30 this morning at NOVA Code Camp (novacodecamp.org ) today! (18 October). Come say hi!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 04/09/2025

#RailsWorld Day 1 in the books. From our fun morning boat ride with the Baltic Ruby crew to DHH's keynote, the great hallway track in a beautiful space here in Amsterdam, and the random cat in the window spotted on the way through... Lots of great talks and new and old Ruby Friends.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 07/07/2025

It’s scything time again. Clearing out the overgrown garden and feeding the trimmings to the cow and boy goats before I head off to @rubycentral.org ‘s RailsConf this week in Philly. Hit me up to talk hobby farming, permaculture, or UX for rails devs. I’m presenting Thursday right before lunch!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 03/06/2025

It’s been tending that way for two decades at least.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 17/04/2025

My eldest daughter found an Easter Mad Libs book in the bin and has been plowing through them. Not exactly proper Holy Week flair but I remember doing these as a kid and I just have to chuckle at the ludicrous outcomes.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 11/04/2025

I had the privilege of attending the first RailsConf almost a decade ago, and will now be speaking at the last formal "RailsConf". I'll be bringing a quick-hitting talk of items to improve your UX and your interface look and doing some real-time design to show how this isn't some mystical art ...

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 08/04/2025

This was probably one of the more surreal client moments ever. Hilarious I still have my completely useless badge because I felt it was going to be one of those “oh man, lemmejusttellyou about the crash”

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 14/03/2025

We're putting the finishing touches on our first DeveloperUX course: "Typography for Developers" and we should be launching it by the end of the month! Over 3 hours of delicious content to help make your apps look better with simple typographical changes.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/02/2025

“So it begins…” We do a lot of reading out loud as a family. We finished the Hobbit earlier this year and the kids have asked to dude into Lord of the Rings as some of their friends’ families are doing the same.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/01/2025

That's a little mean there, macOS. Curious about what this new update in Docker has hanging out inside the 2GB of package size that triggered this warning. Is anyone seeing similar reactions?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 08/01/2025

What passive-aggressive marketing crap is this, Grammarly? I pay for the service. I don't need to be chastised for not using it at a level you believe to be correct.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 01/01/2025

Here's a dark pattern I'd like to see go away in 2025. You click a link to an article, and it's paywalled (or requires login). No problem, I've actually paid for an account here / have a login / etc. So you login, and you expect to then read the article you were on. Right?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 28/12/2024

You should be able too add them manually. If you go to the blood pressure page in the all health data there is an “add data” “button” in the upper right.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 24/12/2024

Gluten free Christmas stollen! One of my annual bakes. Paul Hollywood might call it passable. lol

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/12/2024

This is a fun bug. Only shows up in the widget on the phone. Click through and it’s correct. I can o yo guess that it’s somehow counting the cores on my Mac Studio to get these ludicrous numbers of hours per hour. Anyone seen this kind of thing?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 02/12/2024

Oh boy … so I looked it up and …. Yeah. Would need to nuke two drives in the center and 3D print some stuff for the iPod but….

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 02/12/2024

Jalapeño jelly made with the gleaned jalapeños from the garden (had all gone red, hence the color). Tastes awesome on ham as well as with various cheeses.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/11/2024

Gabe and Quincy just helped load 130 bales of hay into the loft. Our neighbors boys (one year older) just are expected to be doing the chicken chores first thing in the AM. We are working on that, mostly because both coops need repair. Baby steps tho. We can always work out a “farm work” day lol

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 21/11/2024

Anything after Cursor on the right is a "depends on what's going on" area. Probably need to clean this out but I love the muscle memory more than the minimalism.

MacOS dock with way too much crap in it.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 19/11/2024

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 18/11/2024

Age yourself with your first computer. (This 1987 MacSE sits in my office and still powers up!)

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/11/2024

Reviewing boxes before shipping to get printed. Yay plotter!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/11/2024

Doing the LEGO robotics competition today with the boys (oldest daughter will be old enough next year) it was fun to work with them on one of the programming challenges and explain that, yes, most software programs fail the first time you write them.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 11/11/2024

All day smoke on this Boston butt from our friends at Lions Rest Farm up in Marshall VA. Using Chris’ (the farmer who raised this) pork rub on a mustard base.

Boston butt roast ready to go in the smoker with a pork rub over mustard base

Weber smoky mountain smoker churning away with sunrise behind it

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 10/11/2024

If you see this, post a concert picture you took

U2 on the Joshua Tree anniversary tour in DC

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 02/11/2024

lol want me to come talk about scything?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 28/10/2024

Waiting... waiting... Has anyone gotten access yet to "Apple Intelligence"? Any first impressions?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/10/2024

It's that time of year again! We are fundraising for our Cub Scout Pack, where Gabe (9), Teddy (almost 8), and Jacqueline (5) are all Scouting! Here's some photos from some of our fun at Camp Shenandoah this summer and fall. buff.ly/3NF0Bp2

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 23/09/2024

RailsWorld is right around the corner. Who's heading up to Toronto this week? I'll be getting in on Wednesday and would love to meet up with everyone throughout the conference. DM me or drop me a line at john at athayde dot com and let's sync up!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 17/06/2023

We came back from a swim meet to see our cow had delivered her calf a few weeks earlier than we expected on Wednesday. Both mama and baby (boy) are doing well so far!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 11/05/2023

This is what I take that also has magnesium, taurine, gaba, and some other stuff. It’s what my functional med MD had suggested

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