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Best of the Web
Great programming articles you may have missed
Issue: 24.3 (May/June 2026)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
Article Description: The article compilation shares diverse programming-related insights, beginning with Nilay Patel's critique on the tech industry's misplaced focus on automation, exemplified by smart home disinterest despite corporate investments. Patel argues that AI's push infringes on human essence, fueling public distrust. Peter Steinberger contrasts this by highlighting AI's potential to streamline mundane coding tasks, shifting development bottlenecks from typing to cognitive processes. JA Westenberg then addresses cultural biases against optimism, positing that societal valorization of pessimism stifles innovation and creativity. Lastly, Andrew Murphy critiques managerial missteps in software development, illustrating how optimizing non-bottleneck processes can degrade overall system efficiency. The author invites readers to suggest future article topics for broader tech discourse exploration..
Article Length (in bytes): 5,065
Starting Page Number: 90
Article Number: 24309
Related Link(s): None
Excerpt of article text...
Here I share links to interesting programming-related articles from around the web. Note that these may not have anything to do with Xojo, and I don't necessarily advocate the opinions shared—I simply think they're worth reading for a broader perspective.
The People Do Not Yearn For Automation
by Nilay Patel (
https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-backlash-databases-automation )
Excerpt: Regular people don't see the opportunity to write code as an opportunity at all. The people do not yearn for automation. I'm a full-on smart home sicko; the lights and shades and climate controls of my house are automated in dozens of ways. But huge companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have struggled for over a decade now to make regular people care about smart home automation at all. And they just don't. ...
And so the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at enormous cost—energy, emissions, manufacturing capacity, the ability to buy RAM—and locked into the narrow framework of software brain without realizing they are also asking people to be fundamentally less human. They then sit around wondering why everyone hates them.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.









