Hillel

New Newsletter!

Fun fact: the word "escalate" comes from the word "escalator", as in "electric moving staircase". (Ignore the bump in 1830, that's a Google labeling error)

*Logic for Programmers* is now 30% off on Amazon for some reason, go buy a copy before they change their minds www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBLP4B26

Watching “Logic for Programmers” youtu.be/8Xrvyu5tV28 by @hillelwayne.com

I have a new blog post! This is a response to the current formal methods hype and explains what TLA+ is good for and what it's not designed to check. buttondown.com/hillelwayne/...

I created an AI model that takes ANY software system and produces a TLA+ model that satisfies ALL its properties. Software engineering is solved forever!

Arguing about arguments steveklabnik.com/writing/argu...

So, uh, apparently twitter is now selling old handles to the highest bidder

After a move experts are calling "incomprehensible", "ill-advised", and "to New York City", I'm now down to meet tech people in NYC if they want to ask questions and brainstorm and stuff

Tomorrow, 9 AM PST, my Systems Distributed talk "Logic for Programmers" goes live! I'll be answering questions and giving background info on the stream, so check it out! @tigerbeetle.com m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xrv...

there was a great essay by @hillelwayne.com a while back about how uml never had a standard symbolic representation; the standard only defined the pictures: buttondown.com/hillelwayne/...

Has anyone used Ted Chiang's "Catching Crumbs from the Table" as an analogy to AI's progress in math? gwern.net/doc/fiction/...

I feel like Metamorphic testing, checking how changing an input changes a function, would be a pretty good way to evaluate AI tooling. Like if we're writing an AI writing detector, for any random given piece of prose, asking Claude to "clean it up" should *increase* the score

Someone on LinkedIn has extremely low expectations of my wife, my grandmother, and Donald Knuth

New Newsletter! Remember that old article about how LLMs liked the word "delve"? Well, the coding harnesses really, REALLY like the word "spine". And "gate". And many others. buttondown.com/hillelwayne/...

Right now the biggest barrier to AI-driven formal methods is that AIs are absolutely dogshit at coming up with good properties. I thought that was just a March 2026 thing but it seems to be a September 2026 thing too

Are you kidding me

Logic for Programmers got its first five star rating on Amazon holy shit I know I shouldn't be as elated about this as I am but it's one more sign people are *actually reading the book*

This job is the first time I've had unfettered access to Claude code. So, uh, how do people like to customize their Claude rigs? Special skills, hooks, other stuff? I'm not great at using programs in their vanilla state

*Logic for Programmers* has been out for a month! To celebrate, I'm released the whole second chapter, "A Crash Course in Logic", for free online. That's 7000 words teaching practical math for the working programmer: www.hillelwayne.com/post/predica...

New programming book arrived in the mail 👀 There's never been a better time to think deeply about the structure behind the code we cause to exist.

Tired: software engineering isn't dead because Anthropic is hiring lots of software engineers Wired: writing isn't dead because the Claude Code docs are clearly not vibeslopped

Everybody's favorite part of publishing a book is writing errata

BTW I work for @antithesis.com now (as of last week)

Amazon seems to be selling Logic for Programmers for 15% off if you want to go get it for slightly cheaper. I had no idea this was happening and have no control over the sale, but I get the same royalties either way! www.amazon.com/dp/B0HBLP4B26

Okay, I'll admit it. NixOS is pretty cool. (I haven't yet run into the hair-tearing scenarios that make people scream so for now I'm just enjoying the cool bits)

:D might have to get the ebook though since there are exercises and having it side by side is nice

Watch me tapdance on a tightrope in a hurricane

Windows update just erased all my custom desktop backgrounds to show their spotlight photos instead What a stupid, user hostile, customer hating OS

Taking a large social media mental health break. Reachable by email. Probably back on before softwareshould.work starts up again. Seeya in July!

Does anybody have ins at Google marketing? I NEED to know how who was in charge of making sure this car miniature had A Chrome advert on it and how much Google had to pay (I believe the actual car had a Chrome advert, too, but surely they have to negotiate the merchandise, too?)

New newsletter, short buttondown.com/hillelwayne/...

Next up... "Logic isn't just for detectives and mathematicians! A small bit of logic helps us programmers in all sorts of ways, from testing better to actually making sense of left outer joins." @hillelwayne.com returns to #systemsdistributed to teach Logic for Programmers!