Essays · Field notes · Occasional tricks

Notes on code, craft, and small wonders.

Engineering leader by trade. Magician by habit. Writing about building things, breaking things, and the quiet trade-offs in between.

Alex Massaad Alex Massaad Fergus, Ontario RSS LinkedIn
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The programme

21 essays · est. 2023
Latest

The Status Page Is the Real Architecture Diagram

I was mid-session in Claude Code when everything died. Not just my session: claude.ai, the API, the whole consumer fleet, red across the board. One row on the status page stayed green...

Agentic Filmmaking: What Comes After AI Video Generation

Watching what’s happening to video production right now feels like rewatching a movie I’ve already seen. A few years ago, agents came for software engineering and everyone argued about whether “agentic” meant...

AI Brought Me Back to Filmmaking (Through TypeScript)

I studied film at Carleton. Then I spent a decade at Shopify, then another stretch building TypeScript applications for merchants. Filmmaking became the thing I used to do. The thing I told...

Agentic Engineering Is Vibe Coding in a Blazer

Every few months tech gives an old thing a new name and acts surprised when the old problems show up. “Vibe coding” got rebranded to “agentic engineering” sometime in February. It sounds...

AI doesn't reduce work, it intensifies it

The people burning out on AI tools aren’t the ones who refuse to use them. They’re the ones who are best at it. A BCG survey of nearly 1,500 workers found that...

— Intermission —

The team member helping you just clocked out

An AI tool going down mid-workday is like a fire alarm going off all afternoon. You can’t focus, you can’t ignore it, and there’s no actual fire. Just a building full of...