Geoffrey Litt (@geoffreylitt) / X

Geoffrey Litt

8,307 posts

Geoffrey Litt

@geoffreylitt

malleable software @NotionHQ / prev @inkandswitch, @MIT_CSAIL / 🇯🇵🇺🇸

Washington, DC

Joined December 2010

Pinned
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Jul 2
Hot take: I think it's still important to understand the code that our agents write! In this mega thread (based on my AIE talk today), I will explain why that's the case, and show some ideas for how to efficiently understand code. Alright, let's dive in. 1/
400K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
May 27, 2023
i have spent today asking: what would be the absolutely dumbest possible UI to accept a software EULA?
00:00
453K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Mar 3, 2025
# the nightmare bicycle imo, the most important idea in product design is to avoid the "nightmare bicycle". imagine a bicycle where the product manager said "people don't get math so we can't have numbered gears - we need to have labeled buttons for gravel mode, downhill mode,
169K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
May 20, 2025
The most painful part of writing is realizing you don’t quite know what you actually think
118K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Nov 30, 2023
I don’t think about the Roman Empire very often, but I do think at least weekly about how the iPhone shipped without any user testing or focus groups
454K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Nov 7, 2022
1/ "Build an app with a spreadsheet" is a mainstream idea now (Airtable, Glide, Coda, Notion, etc) but I believe there's still so much room to push this model further. Quick list of some (lesser-known??) projects that I find thought-provoking in this space:
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Mar 19, 2023
What if -- despite all the hype -- we are in fact underestimating the effect LLMs will have on the nature of software distribution and end-user programming? some early, v tentative thoughts: 1/
585K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Jun 15, 2020
There's a saying that writing software is more like tending a garden than constructing a building -- things constantly change. But the more I learn about how buildings evolve, I think this process is actually a perfect analogy for designing software! Thread:
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Nov 15, 2023
Anyone else finding the new ChatGPT-4 with browsing to be a major downgrade? Now instead of quickly hallucinating an approximate answer it slowly Googles (sorry, Bings?) the wrong thing and then gives a worse answer
144K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
May 22, 2025
underrated technique: vibe code a full-custom debug view for code you're writing by hand! in this case, visualizing a parsing algorithm 😎 a clear interactive visualization helps you really grok what's going on step by step, and of course helps with fixing bugs too
00:00
80K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Oct 24, 2025
A lot of people say AI will make us all "managers" or "editors"...but I think this is a dangerously incomplete view! Personally, I'm trying to code like a surgeon. A surgeon isn't a manager, they do the actual work! But their skills and time are highly leveraged with a support
171K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Dec 20, 2024
was working on a prolog interpreter this week step 1: had Claude make me a custom debugger UI that could visualize execution traces of my interpreter! AI-generated custom dev tools ftw 😎
00:00
95K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Jul 26, 2025
I’ve noticed people who have good creative ideas usually know tons of things. Good researchers have read a lot of papers. Good musicians have listened to a lot of songs. Not only that, they generally have strong opinions about what’s good/bad out there. I wonder why? I
94K
Geoffrey Litt
@geoffreylitt
Jul 25, 2023
today in AI-powered personal tools: made a tiny app for myself that translates from English to Japanese, with a slider to choose the formality of tone! coded the app using GPT-4; it also calls GPT-4 to do the translation 🤓 1/
00:00
396K