Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/07/2025Arriving with the sound of two thousand angry tambourines, here it is: New issue of Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu... 1140
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 06/07/2025Oh 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... 080
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/06/2025Look, 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... 2120
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 10/06/2025Amp 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... 381
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 08/06/2025Drums 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... 080
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 03/06/2025Municipal 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 140
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 31/05/2025Wait, 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... 1172
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 25/05/2025Someone 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. 1130
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/05/2025The 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... 2251
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" 180
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/05/2025Wrote 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. 8282
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/05/2025Gave a talk, got this hat. (Not pictured: questions about this hat I will get from all the non-tech people that live around me.) 2180
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 11/05/2025Crash, 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... 1120
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 06/05/2025Wrote down how I changed my view on AI. Read it here: registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/theres-bea... 1172
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 03/05/2025Meep 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... 080
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/04/2025Another 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. 1253
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 20/04/2025Is 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... 1181
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 19/04/2025It's 2025. You create a new contact in macOS Contacts. You wonder: should I add their Jabber username? Their ICQ name? Or MSN? Where did we last talk, 15 years ago? 1361
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/04/2025Gave a talk at our Sourcegraph meet-up. (Six months ago I would've called you weird if you'd shown me this photo.) 280
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/04/2025You know me: I'm a Claude man, have been for a while, my thoughts are serif-font on beige background, Claude writes my code and it knows that I don't know how to title-case something. BUT.... Yesterday o3 gave me this analysis of a race condition and, whew boy. 1250
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/04/2025Finally did it. I wrote down how to build a code-editing agent. In 315 lines of code. And yes, it works. Very well. There is no moat. Read it here: ampcode.com/how-to-build... 911820
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 07/04/2025Seriously, why do we have to have confirmation dialog after clicking on a link? "You want to open the link you clicked on?" "You want to open the file you downloaded?" "You want to allow this screen-recording software to record your screen after you told it to?" 790
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 31/03/2025Not bad, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental 03-25. Took 61s to run. (Yes, I bought the book.) 0120
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/03/2025me whenever I ask Claude to do something and it leaves a comment like // In a real implementation, I would ... 182
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/03/2025Four pop-ups/tooltips after click a link. This is what using the majority of software today feels like to me. I must click away hundreds of pop-ups, tooltips, explainers, guides, suggestions, "did you know" every day. 2192
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 25/03/2025Just re-discovered these Programming Principles I wrote down in a note called "Mission Statement" years ago. I still think I stand by them 100%? 7677
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/03/2025expect(true).toBe(true) // Test completed successfully Thanks Claude (3.7)! 2140
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 23/03/2025Lights! Trumpets! Cymbals & drums! A disturbing clunk-clunk-clunk, turning into a wobble-wobble-wobble. Long descending whistle sound — pheeeeooow. Zing, ping, boing — it's here! New Joy & Curiosity! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu... 0151
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/03/2025Sounds like C. S. Lewis didn't use MX Blues andynaselli.com/the-collect... 0121
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/03/2025Tires screeching, kaboom, bang, pow, crash! The boing-oing-oing of a loose spring sticking out. That's right: New Joy & Curiosity is out! registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu... 2231
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/03/2025Slowly getting addicted to tweaking little UI elements... The feedback loop you get when you send screenshots to the agent and it then modifies that stuff for you is incredible. "Make it look more... mysterious? Go." 191
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 09/03/2025I want you to know this: big German newspaper that's mostly about economics/finance/industry shows a "think of the environment before you print!" banner at the top of articles (when you get there via Google?) 130
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 08/03/2025Bang, crash, pow, boom! New Joy & Curiosity is out! Number 30. It's here! A special Saturday delivery, just for you. registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-cu... 1200
Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 07/03/2025We're this to close to being able to forward emails to an agent with changes it should make to our websites, asking it to show us a screenshot before it deploys. This close. 0130