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Josh Pullen

@pulljosh.com
184 followers 284 following 292 posts

I love education & technology. www.joshuapullen.com Opinions are my own.

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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Jake Archibald @jakearchibald.com · 04/09/2026
Playing around with an idea: responsive code. The build script creates up to 5 versions of each code sample using Prettier, and a container query displays the right one. Brotli means the filesize overhead is very small. Live demo: jakearchibald.com/2026/css-cus...
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Web Standards @web-standards.dev · 15/06/2026
CSS reacts, JS just listens. @nerdy.dev’s prop-for-that library exposes runtime state to CSS through custom properties: pointer position, scroll velocity, battery, viewport, and 16+ more, no event handlers needed. #css #js prop-for-that.netlif...
Headline “What JS knows, now CSS knows” next to a Live panel showing pointer.x 99% and pointer.y 24%, above cards for clock, FPS, viewport, scroll velocity, and accent hue.
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Rick Brewster @rickbrew.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I GOT THE DOMAIN! I FINALLY GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!1 🥳🎉 Paint​.NET is now at paint.net! Well, it will be just as soon as I push all the buttons to migrate content and set up redirects from getpaint​.net etc. For now it's just a "hey go here" redirect page.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 24/04/2026
I haven’t gone back and I don’t miss it
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Vanilagy @vanilagy.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
API design is so freaking hard. Over the course of adding HLS support, I've redone the new API about 5 or 6 times by now. Sometimes you literally first need to see how Variant A feels before you know Variant B was better all along. And knowing you can't change it after release!
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 26/03/2026
1) Al is a consensus machine 2) Al answers the question "what does a good response to this prompt look like?" Al is not a ground truth machine
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 12/03/2026
The new @codepen.io compiler seems very good. They've brought so much clarity to a messy ecosystem of tools.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 05/03/2026
Vertical jobs—where you end-to-end solve a problem—seem more stable right now than horizontal jobs, where you specialize in doing one slice of a process.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 01/03/2026
Just deleted my ChatGPT account. I'd rather use an LLM from a company that aligns with my values. I don't support mass surveillance or AI weapons without a human in the loop, and OpenAI does. The decision was made easier by just how good the other LLMs are. We are spoiled for choice!
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 28/02/2026
Four months later, AI agents have crossed a threshold. They're a permanent part of my toolbelt now.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 11/02/2026
Stellar article. I’m still excited about building realtime math collaboration even though I mostly agree with the takeaways.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Matthew Phillips @fancypenguin.party · 08/02/2026
Those things change often but are also low effort so I don't consider it a waste of time. Aside from that, agents really like using CLIs, so investing in that makes sense, I don't know if you saw what Hono was doing or not: blog.yusu.ke/hono-cli/
blog.yusu.ke
Introducing Hono CLI - Yusuke Wada
A CLI for Humans and AI
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 07/02/2026
I wrote about the most ambitious form of AI-assisted software development I've seen yet - Strong DM's "Software Factory" approach, where two of the guiding principles are "Code must not be written by humans" and "Code must not be reviewed by humans" simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/s...
simonwillison.net
How StrongDM’s AI team build serious software without even looking at the code
Last week I hinted at a demo I had seen from a team implementing what Dan Shapiro called the Dark Factory level of AI adoption, where no human even looks …
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 07/02/2026
What are the best @standard.site reader apps? I want to subscribe to everyone's blogs!
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 07/02/2026
What a miracle to live in a time where you can find & befriend everybody who cares about a hyper-specific niche as much as you do.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Mosh Lee @mosh.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Been mulling over @bnewbold.net's recent post on community spaces and atproto's next frontiers. I wrote about why building for organizers (not just users) might be the key to making it all work.
mosh.leaflet.pub
Building for Organizers - The People Layer
The most enduring social networks aren’t the prettiest or the most addictive – it’s the ones that empower organizers.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 02/02/2026
@danabra.mov I'm struggling to grasp how a user's ATProto identity can survive changes in domain/hosting/etc without too much centralization on the registry. As far as I understand, it seems like the registry just... is? Centralized? Maybe it's fine. But I'm curious if you have more insight.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 02/02/2026
Created my first @tangled.org repository! 🎉 I'm not normally an early adopter, but I'm so excited about an ATProto alternative to Github. Folks in my YouTube comments were asking for the source code and this felt like a perfect opportunity to give Tangled a try. tangled.org/pulljosh.com...
tangled.org
pulljosh.com/caret
A world-class math input for the web
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 02/02/2026
I like the idea of writing much more than I like writing
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 01/02/2026
I'm in the tunnel 😔 You know you’re entering a dark tunnel when the upcoming section of a project… - Will take a long time - Has no clear benefit or visible progress until it is completely done - Has no obvious checkpoints or progress markers until it’s done www.joshuapullen.com/blog/working...
joshuapullen.com
Working Through the Tunnel
When a project is in a difficult-to-share state, it's easy to lose motivation. You have to make it through the tunnel.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Artem Zakharchenko @kettanaito.com · 27/01/2026
There is a dichotomy of UI elements. Some elements are a part of your component tree. Cards, form elements, carousels, etc. Some elements don't make much sense as a part of a component tree: toasts, dialogs, alerts. Those are side-effect elements.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Zed @zed.dev · 23/01/2026
LLMs automate typing, not thinking. Mikayla Maki shares her mental model for working with agents, and how she puts it into practice: zed.dev/blog/on-prog...
zed.dev
On Programming with Agents - Zed Blog
From the Zed Blog: Agents handle typing so we can focus on thinking.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 20/01/2026
Working on multiplayer for my math input library, heading down the CRDT rabbit hole I don’t think anyone has solved math multiplayer? Which is crazy because it can’t be that hard… is what I keep telling myself
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 25/10/2025
👎 Coding agents 🤩 Tab autocomplete
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 16/10/2025
A blog that slowly morphs into a web forum over many years
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 18/09/2025
I updated to MacOS 26 and absolutely love it. Much more than I thought I would!
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 31/07/2025
I am stunned... Based on my back-of-the-napkin math, a whopping 5% of ALL US teachers 🤯 have watched one my Shuffle Buddy videos to the end (full retention) www.joshuapullen.com/blog/shuffle...
joshuapullen.com
Shuffle Buddy Found a BIG Audience
I've been shocked the the reception to Shuffle Buddy. All kinds of school staff have shared their need for a random seating chart generator with rules, and the product-market fit has been off the char...
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
I don't think icebreakers build community in a classroom nearly as much as authentic opportunities for collaboration early and often to begin the school year. Students know when it's just a first-week thing, right? Here's what I prioritize instead: thebrokencopier.substack.com/p/building-a...
thebrokencopier.substack.com
Building a Foundation for Collaboration
classroom strategies that help to begin the school year
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 23/07/2025
I just discovered "story tables" from a Knowles fellow and I LOVE them for teaching algebra storytables.substack.com/p/sowhat-is-...
storytables.substack.com
So...what is a Story Table anyway?
Look!
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Shawn Reed @mrreedteach.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Found a really great project made by a math teacher @pulljosh.com called shufflebuddy.com Its a great way to arrange and randomize your class roster into a seating chart. Lovely feature to add rules for restricting A and B from sitting or tagging certain students to a specific spot. #EduSky
shufflebuddy.com
Shuffle Buddy
Foster a strong classroom community by frequently shuffling your seating charts–while respecting your students’ individual needs. Randomize seating charts in one click.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 17/07/2025
I need to stop making Shuffle Buddy better. Getting the word out is working and it's FUN. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/stop-im...
joshuapullen.com
Stop Improving The Product
Josh gets over his fear of sharing and starts marketing Shuffle Buddy, not just toiling away at the product.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 15/07/2025
I got engaged! I love you Jessika ❤️ www.joshuapullen.com/blog/she-sai...
Josh on one knee proposing to Jessika
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 15/07/2025
I’d never used the TikTok app in my life, but I just uploaded a video and now I feel famous. The internet has warped my perception of numbers, but ~3,000 people seeing my thing is CRAZY www.tiktok.com/t/ZTHg51Y4og...
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 14/07/2025
I finally figured out <meta /> tags to add an image to the post when it is shared. I was using <meta name="og:image" ... /> originally instead of the correct form, <meta property="og:image" ... /> It's weird because it's a little difficult to test if your meta tags are correct until you deploy them
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 14/07/2025
I've been collecting strategies that teachers use to randomize their seating charts, and I don't like any of them (except the one I made). Ways I don't like: 1. Popsicle Sticks 2. Deck of Cards 3. By Hand with Sticky Notes 4. Random Number Generator www.shufflebuddy.com/blog/five-wa...
shufflebuddy.com
5 Ways to Randomly Shuffle Student Seats (I invented #5)
Seating charts don't have to be a pain. Here are five great ways to randomly shuffle student seats.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 14/07/2025
Next week, I'll be presenting Shuffle Buddy at the Knowles Teacher Initiative summer conference. I'm excited to help more teachers with their seating charts! www.shufflebuddy.com
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 13/07/2025
It's so easy for personal biases to become systems if you aren't careful. I was testing my name-identification heuristics and look which names it doesn't think are names. (Spoiler: It's the ones with accents.)
A table where the names Scarlett, Grace, Alexander, Liam, and Isabella are selected, but José, María, François, Amélie, Björn, and Søren are not.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
ncnvrgnt @inconvergent.net · 02/07/2025
you will of course recognise that they are still having some issues over at the utah teapot factory
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 29/06/2025
I love this post by Alan Wu about the motivating value of community. It is absolutely true and I want to find/build more communities around my passions alanwu.xyz/posts/commun...
alanwu.xyz
A good community can have tremendous influence on one’s motivation. I never appreciated this fact enough so I wanted to write about it here.
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Reposted by Josh Pullen
Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 29/06/2025
My fun theory is that having aphantasia (no mental pictures) makes me better at programming. Kinda like how people who are blind typically have better hearing. I am very well-practiced at thinking in terms of abstract information
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 22/06/2025
I actually annoyed myself while writing this because I followed the post’s advice while writing the post and it turned out better than anything else I’ve written. I want to be smarter than the ideas I can articulate, but I’m not.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 22/06/2025
Some ideas don’t gain traction because they are invisible. Dandelion ideas come to life when you give them a name. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/dandeli...
joshuapullen.com
Dandelion Ideas
Some ideas don’t gain traction because they are invisible. Dandelion ideas come to life when you give them a name.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 21/06/2025
Why did I include a very prominent photo of myself in the blog design? It's not narcissism. It's a marker against AI slop. The article exists primarily for the purposes of SEO, but it's also a real article with real advice written by a real person.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 21/06/2025
Teachers who use Shuffle Buddy love it, but I need to get the word out more. To that end, I am creating a blog in the hopes of improving SEO. I started with a post titled "5 Ways to Randomly Shuffle Student Seats." ⬇️ Why do this? ⬇️ 1/6 www.shufflebuddy.com/blog/five-wa...
shufflebuddy.com
5 Ways to Randomly Shuffle Student Seats (I invented #5)
Seating charts don't have to be a pain. Here are five great ways to randomly shuffle student seats.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 20/06/2025
It's Get Swole Summer for me www.joshuapullen.com/blog/get-swo...
joshuapullen.com
Get Swole Summer
Thoughts on education and technology.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 31/05/2025
I probably spent ~6 hours designing this multi-select dropdown menu, and it still has major issues that need to be fixed. Programmers know how long it takes to build things that users should take for granted.
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 31/05/2025
I spent the majority of my teenage years with a ripping engine but no traction. I was talented, full of energy, and ready to build. I poured countless hours into projects. I wrote code, built things, and then... abandoned them. Now I’ve fixed that. Here’s how. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/tractio...
joshuapullen.com
Traction Against The World
Stop spinning your wheels but going nowhere. Traction is the key to forward progress.
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 25/05/2025
I put together an annotated version of the new Claude 4 system prompt, covering both the prompt Anthropic published and the missing, leaked sections that describe its various tools It's basically the secret missing manual for Claude 4, it's fascinating! simonwillison.net/2025/May/25/...
Introducing Claude
Establishing the model’s personality
Model safety
More points on style
Be cognizant of red flags
Is the knowledge cutoff date January or March?
election_info
Don’t be a sycophant!
Differences between Opus 4 and Sonnet 4
The missing prompts for tools
Thinking blocks
Search instructions
Seriously, don’t regurgitate copyrighted content
More on search, and research queries
Artifacts: the missing manual
Styles
This is all really great documentation
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Josh Pullen @pulljosh.com · 21/05/2025
A few weeks ago, I visited 16 classrooms to make observations. The most breathtaking anecdote I witnessed was an extreme form of multitasking from a special education teacher who coached two students through their essay writing simultaneously. It was wild. 1/2
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