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).
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).
(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
16 Jul 2026 #misc
Since 2024, I’ve kept ideapads to capture bad ideas.
Back then, by pure chance, I found the concept of becoming an idea machine.
That’s writing 10 bad ideas about anything. Every. Single. Day.
That habit has helped me write books and keep my creative juices flowing.
It’s been so helpful that I made it Idea #5 in my book, 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too.
That book itself started as a 10-idea list.
But before starting to write bad ideas, I faced the question of where to write them.
Those days, a friend came from France on her vacation.
She brought me a Mona Lisa notebook as a gift, likely from the Louvre.
It was simply too beautiful to fill it with my bad ideas.
Afraid of “damaging” it, I stapled recycled paper into an ideapad.
A notebook small enough to only write 10 lines, one per idea.
I went through the same experience Kwist shared in this post:
“In an attempt to change [keeping clean and tidy notebooks], I’ve started a dedicated “dirt notebook” now…I’m using an old, empty notebook that I found lying around the other day. The paper quality is pretty bad; every kind of fountain pen ink bleeds through so I’m forced to use cheap ballpoints and it doesn’t open flat, which makes it hard to take clean-looking notes in.”
Don’t let a beautiful notebook or perfect pens restrain your ideas.
The roughest paper ignites your best ideas.
15 Jul 2026 #misc
While catching up with ex-coworkers, the conversation inevitable turned to the future of coding.
By the end of the evening, “You’re absolutely right!” had become an inside joke.
That’s what ChatGPT seem to say when it’s wrong.
Each time someone asked a question, they got an “You’re absolutely right!”
AI answers aren’t 100% reliable.
Coding’s short feedback loops make AI mistakes evident.
Now imagine trusting every answer just because “AI said that.”
Medical recommendations, investment strategies, even dating advice…
That’s dangerous.
Adi shared a similar thought in Punch Yourself in the Face with Reality about entrepreneurship, startups, and AI:
“I know you want to use AI as an escape. It is so tempting. You get to sit in your bubble and imagine everything and see it come to life and your agent buddy will keep cheering you on while you get nothing done with your life. And I think that’s the biggest danger of AI. You convince yourself that you are doing something useful when you are not.”
LLMs are designed to appear helpful and confident.
They tap into our confirmation bias.
LLMs aren’t reliable and we aren’t absolutely right—all the time.
14 Jul 2026 #wellness
Binge-watching TV isn’t exactly productive. Books are better.
But recently, I’ve binged Brilliant Minds.
Think a less dramatic version of House M.D. with wilder patients.
Near the end of season 2, Dr. Wolf, the protagonist, said:
“We’re all just doing our best to hold ourselves together.”
A little reminder that:
Nobody is normal. We’re all figuring out life as we go. We’re all just holding ourselves together.
Want to change your life, but not sure how to start? Check out 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life.
13 Jul 2026 #coding #writing
Last week, I found this question on a dev.to post:
“Is it just me, or has anyone noticed that articles on dev.to don’t get as many reads/views as they used to before?”
Yes! On dev.to, Medium, and on the Internet overall.
There’s no point in writing how-to tutorials anymore, unless you’re starting your coding or writing journey with TIL posts.
For step-by-step guidance on coding tasks, there’s a magical text-area that seems to understands you and spits out answers fast.
Less people are landing on blogs and tutorials after Google pushed instant answers. For a couple of years, my series on unit testing and LINQ drove the most traffic. Even, I went “viral” with a a post on unit testing private methods. These days, they barely have any traffic.
And when was the last time you Google or open StackOverflow when stuck? Your behavior as reader tells a lot about what to do as a writer.
Is there still market for tech content? Yes.
But we have to give what AI can’t. Thoughts, rants, stories…Authenticity. That’s how to stand out in a sea of AI slop.
It’s not a surprise that my most popular recent “technical” posts are hard truths nobody told me about coding and the most painful lesson from my best job.
If AI can do it in minutes, it isn’t special.
If you’re starting out your coding journey, I still recommend you to write online. That’s one of the lessons I cover in Street-Smart Coding—The roadmap I wish I had when I started.