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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 · 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 · 13/06/2025
I think it comes from gaming
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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 · 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 · 26/05/2025
AGI my ass
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 26/05/2025
Going for it
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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
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 · 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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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 13/05/2025
🤝
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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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 26/04/2025
Morning!
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/04/2025
Tastes like software
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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
It'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?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/04/2025
Gave a talk at our Sourcegraph meet-up. (Six months ago I would've called you weird if you'd shown me this photo.)
Picture of me in front of projected slide that reads "You need to be AI maxxing, anon", with audience in foreground
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/04/2025
You 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.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/04/2025
Finally 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...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 07/04/2025
Seriously, 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?"
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 04/04/2025
This is how I want them to remember me
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 31/03/2025
Not bad, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental 03-25. Took 61s to run. (Yes, I bought the book.)
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/03/2025
me whenever I ask Claude to do something and it leaves a comment like // In a real implementation, I would ...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 28/03/2025
Four 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.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 25/03/2025
Just re-discovered these Programming Principles I wrote down in a note called "Mission Statement" years ago. I still think I stand by them 100%?
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 24/03/2025
expect(true).toBe(true) // Test completed successfully Thanks Claude (3.7)!
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 23/03/2025
Lights! 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...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 22/03/2025
Note: this was 70 euros!
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 22/03/2025
Finally, the whole collection.
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 19/03/2025
Claude when I write "but it doesn't work, does it?"
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 18/03/2025
Sounds like C. S. Lewis didn't use MX Blues andynaselli.com/the-collect...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 15/03/2025
Tires 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...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 14/03/2025
Exactly what I would do if I had to fix that error
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 12/03/2025
Slowly 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."
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 10/03/2025
Still got it
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 09/03/2025
I 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?)
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 08/03/2025
Bang, 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...
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 07/03/2025
Good evening!
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Thorsten Ball @thorstenball.com · 07/03/2025
We'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.
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