Friday Links: Offloading thinking, reality check, and reading more books

17 Jul 2026 #mondaylinks

Hey there.

Quick update: Street-Smart Coding Manifesto is almost done. No more hunting for typos. If you preordered, I’m sending a preview next week.

And as usual, here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:

#1. Google search (if that’s still a thing) and LLMs are great for quick facts. When was America discovered? But the real problem is offloading our thinking to AI (10min), even for simple tasks.

#2. LLMs often reply “You’re absolutely right.” For your next project or idea, get a punch in reality (5min).

#3. Want to read more books? Here’s how (9min). And no, you don’t need hacks.

#4. AI has made code so cheap that it’s turning software into marketing (9min).

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And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about the drop of technical content (2min) and 7 random but interesting ideas I found recently (3min).

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(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. My case against syntax obsession to stand out. Because real impact comes from skills outside your IDE.

Keep coding smarter,

Cesar