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Thorsten Ball

@thorstenball.com
4.9K followers 251 following 732 posts

Author of interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com. Working at Sourcegraph. Previously Zed. Programming where the rubber hits the road. Writing Register Spill at: registerspill.thorstenball.com

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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 21/01/2026
When Gemini 3 came out I said it's the greatest model of all time. I loved it. But it didn't work for others. This week I'm seriously trying GPT-5.2 and already said it might be better than G3. Today, GPT-5.2 let me down and I wonder... am I... the boy who cried GOAT?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 21/01/2026
Is it safe to mention AI here now or will people call me a dumbass? No snark, genuine question. Main thing on my mind right now is how programming is changing and I love to talk about it. But I don't have the energy to fight over it.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/01/2026
yo yo yo
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/07/2025
Arriving with the sound of two thousand angry tambourines, here it is: New issue of Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 06/07/2025
Oh my god, Marty, would you look at that! What is it, Barbara? Are you okay? Marty, it's... it's... two made-up names and... a new issue of Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/06/2025
Look, look, look! It's back! The two week break is over. A new Joy & Curiosity. Read it here (if you're not subscribed — wow): registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 21/06/2025
Extending the summer break: no newsletter this weekend.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 13/06/2025
CARO: Robert Moses, who replaced corruption in New York City, was worse than corruption for the democratic processes. In the postwar era many forces were coming together to destroy those processes in New York. But he was the most import— THORSTEN, CARO'S FRIEND: fuck him up bob
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 10/06/2025
Amp now supports subagents. They're very powerful and I wonder whether they will change a lot of things. So I wrote about them: ampcode.com/agents-for-t...
Screenshot of the blog post that starts with this text:

"Amp now has subagents. Here’s what they look like in action:

<screenshot of app showing subagents>

But chances are that the first sentence and even that screenshot didn’t cause your facial expression to change.

After all: who even knows what a subagent is? So let’s start there.

What’s a subagent? If you’ve read How to Build an Agent you know that we define an agent as “an LLM with access to tools, giving it the ability to modify something outside the context window.”

Subagents are tools, too. They are agents that can be started by the main agent, the one you’re interacting with when you use Amp.

[...]"
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 08/06/2025
Drums being drummed on, rattles, cymbals— A group of people shouting hey, hey, hey— Something's falling out of the sky, thrown out of a plane, what is it? The group of people is pointing towards it. "Hey, it's a new Register Spill!" registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 03/06/2025
Municipal office in my town let me know that my new personal ID is ready. The Reply-To here translates to: "Please use email from attachment" Welcome to small-town Germany
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 01/06/2025
Yesterday I told my wife "you have to watch this" and showed her the Dyson keynote with the PencilVac and the FluffyCones and said stuff like "look! double lasers!" and "haha, no, wait, the best is yet to come" Today I'm wondering whether she looks at me the same.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 31/05/2025
Wait, what is tha— Someone slipped something under the door. It's... Look, it's a new Register Spill! (Special Saturday Morning Delivery with Special Jujutsu Intro) registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 29/05/2025
Okay, okay, `jj split` — that's nice.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/05/2025
Small personal update: Heard the idiom “all hat, no cattle” for the first time today and, starting now, I’m going to try to use it as much as possible.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/05/2025
AGI my ass
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/05/2025
Here we go, week of jj.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 25/05/2025
Someone on LinkedIn took my post on How to Build an Agent, shortened it, removed all the code, simplified, and posted it there, on LinkedIn. If you were to tell me that it's all AI generated — the post itself, the comments, the job titles of the commentators — I'd believe you.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/05/2025
The pleasant hum of a harddrive, the soothing whirring of a dust-covered fan. Suddenly: the sound of the floppy drive ejecting something. A whirr, a click — a snap! That's... that's not a floppy disk? No! It's a new Register Spill! Read it here: registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/05/2025
Sometimes a great outcome of a day of programming is knowing what *not* to do now. (At least that's what I'm telling myself right now.)
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/05/2025
Do I know a sound designer on here who can create sounds for software?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/05/2025
Your rating?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 19/05/2025
"where are you going to put the ads?" "i don't think you understand what i'm going for"
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 19/05/2025
I have this feeling that all the big labs are RLing the models to get better at zero-shotting complete apps and I'm really wondering whether that's the right solution. I personally like working in tandem with an assistant — it goes for a bit, I check, I ask for changes, etc
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 17/05/2025
No newsletter this week, I'm completely off this weekend
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/05/2025
Wrote down how Amp — the agentic coding tool we've been working on for the last months — has changed programming for me. Read it here: ampcode.com/how-i-use-amp Yes, I barely type code by hand anymore.
Screenshot of article's first page that explains this:

"For the past 10 weeks, Amp has been the main tool with which I develop software and — putting yet another exclamation mark behind the fact that the tools we use end up changing us — it has fundamentally changed how I develop software.

So I thought I’d use the occasion to write up how I personally use Amp."
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Reposted by Thorsten Ball
Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
My most common prompt critique is “this doesn’t make sense.” Sometimes people write instructions that are impossible to follow and then report that the model can’t do a task. Not really news to anyone, but liberal arts (writing, philosophy, logic, critique) training is good for this kind of thing.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 13/05/2025
Whenever someone with barefoot shoes walks into the gym I know that in 5min I will see some amazing yet weird feats of strength.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/05/2025
Gave a talk, got this hat. (Not pictured: questions about this hat I will get from all the non-tech people that live around me.)
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/05/2025
So, there really isn't a calendar application yet into which I can drop a screenshot and it turns it into a calendar entry? Seems trivial to build nowadays, no?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 11/05/2025
Crash, boom, pang, meep meep — wait, what's that? It's... pretzels filled with peanut butte— No! It's a new Joy & Curiosity after all. registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 09/05/2025
dude what
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 09/05/2025
So I guess it's international law that whenever you build a hotel you have to invite The Guy and tell him: "we love your work, we've seen what you've done in the other hotels, please master, design us a new set of shower controls that the world hasn't seen before"
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 06/05/2025
Wrote down how I changed my view on AI. Read it here: registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/theres-bea...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 03/05/2025
Meep meep, watch out, wait, no, step aside— oops, sorry about that! Well, here it is: a new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 02/05/2025
nature vs. nurture but training vs. system-prompt
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 29/04/2025
I'll be in SF next week. Arriving Sunday, leaving Friday. It's going to be a busy, busy week, but hey, if someone wants to have a coffee, let me know!
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 29/04/2025
In case you're stuck writing something and can't get it out the door: Know that most things should be half as long.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/04/2025
Another entry for the They're Just Like Us log: Agent in Amp started removing now-obsolete properties, gets tired after 3 lines, decides to use ripgrep to do the rest of the replacements.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/04/2025
Fastmail should be studied for how they evolved their UI over the years. It's all very considered and tasteful, in my opinion. Sticks out by how much it doesn't stick out and doesn't go with trends.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/04/2025
The noise of someone kicking in a door. A chair falling over. Feet shuffling on the floor. Then, silence. But suddenly: a joyous scream. There it is, there it is. A new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
registerspill.thorstenball.com
Joy & Curiosity #37
Interesting & joyful things from the previous week
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Reposted by Thorsten Ball
Russ Cox @swtch.com · 25/04/2025
Another fun magic trick! Differential Coverage for Debugging research.swtch.com/diffcover
research.swtch.com
research!rsc: Differential Coverage for Debugging
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/04/2025
Morning!
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Reposted by Thorsten Ball
codehakase @codehakase.com · 25/04/2025
My notes from reading @thorstenball.com's article on building ai agents. codehakase.com/blog/2025-04...
codehakase.com
Notes on building a coding agent | Francis Sunday
My personal reflections on Thorsten's Ampcode article, which reveals how building AI coding agents can be more about leveraging powerful models than complex, custom code.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/04/2025
If you're a tax accountant in Germany and know what the following words mean Carta, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy, Contractor, ISO, NSO, stock option, exercise window, Deel, Remote, Merchant of Record, Delaware company you can make a lot of money. Sadly, I don't think you exist.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/04/2025
Tastes like software
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/04/2025
me, having written: writing is beautiful, writing *is* thinking, the noblest pursuit me, trying to write: writing fucking sucks, whoever invented the written word is a dumbass, it's all garbage anyway. talking, now that's something
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 23/04/2025
With every emoji you put into an announcement message, the information I retain goes down by 10%.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/04/2025
Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Is it maybe a small bird? Or a beetle? Maybe it's a beetle? Or a mosquito? Man, I hope it's not a mos— No! It's a new Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 19/04/2025
I like the cut of your jib, Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview 03-25
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