One of the best engineers in the world on the massive leap in AI coding effectiveness in December 2025

Which products win and lose in a world where AI Agents, as opposed to people, pick them more and more?

Box CEO on the future of enterprise software in a world of AI. Lots of very thoughtful points (see snapshots) and worth reading for anyone in tech, but the core thesis is:

“In contrast to some of the public discussion, l'd argue that in a world of 100X more Al agents than people in an enterprise, the value of the systems of record and tools agents will use will go up, not down. Because in this new world, software provides the guardrails on which agents can operate successfully within an enterprise, and gives them the underlying tools to use to be more productive themselves and work alongside people."

The doctor with 40 million daily patients:

What's the issue in Boston venture capital?

What's the potential of Boston venture capital?

(Note per the article most hardware is actually built in Cambridge, Somerville, and outer suburbs rather than Boston proper.)

John Rawls argues that advantages from the “birth lottery” (family, class, talents) are morally arbitrary. Because people don’t deserve them, society should be designed as if no one knows their starting position (the veil of ignorance).

This position is certainly thought provoking, but coming across this site helped me empathize more with it and make it a bit more concrete. Give it a go and see if it does the same for you. 

Most popular TV shows of the 21st century 

The global trend away from alcohol consumption continues 

Florida vs New York winters

"We transformed the company in very fundamental ways 4 times."

1. Evolve ABP from simple French bakery to a chain of bakery cafes. Re-invented into sandwiches
2. New paradigm: fast casual. ABP was becoming pedestrianized. Took form as we created Panera bread.
3. Decision to bet everything on Panera brand, told ourselves we couldn’t do everything. And we sold off everything else including ABP.
4. Reinvented Panera completely. When we had more than $2,000 stores, and feeding more than 1 in 30 Americans every week. Hard truth was we were losing competitive advantage. Changed how we make and deliver food. And taking it further to meet market’s desire for crave able wellness. 

The key insight that sparked Panera:

"Customers were beginning to reject mass market. Coke/Pepsi for Snapple Iced Tea, grocery store coffee for speciality coffee beans, Budweiser for craft beer. A desire for something for special, artisanal, and unique and products made the old fashioned way. It was happening in beer and beverages and coffee and we realized it was about to happen for food. People wanted to feel better about their quick dining experiences. We wanted to make people feel special again."

What Panera is about:

• Built on artisan bread: "Bread is our passion, soul, & expertise”. We built fresh dough instead of using frozen, and we spent $75,000 per store for the best bread ovens. Others just couldn’t copy it at all or easily."
• "We began to sketch out a cafe that would be built on relationships. That filled a bit of your soul as well as your stomach. A cafe that was an oasis from the rush of everyday life...'Warmth' is what I felt when I walked into the store."
• "There is a need in our culture for a third space. We had 100 or more seats in our cafes so could offer a true gathering space infused with positive and welcoming energy. For veterans of the food industry, where tables/seating were intentionally designed to be slightly uncomfortable to encourage turnover, inviting customers to linger was heresy. But we had plenty of excess capacity outside of meal time and we saw opportunity to build sales during these hours, becoming a venue to meet, linger, read, study, wait, conduct interviews, gossip with friends, write the great American novel, our just catch a breath."

And a few more quotes that struck me from the book:

• "It’s a cliche to ask “what business are you really in?”. But I’m amazed by how many restaurants owners and operators think they’re in the food business. They’re not. They’re in the experience business. And food is only part of that equation."
• “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s telling myself the truth."
• The flip side: “For every great quarter, there are dozens of family dinners missed. For every breakthrough innovation, there’s a personal tragedy that you just swallow while you keep showing up to work every day. For every happy customer, there’s a disappointed spouse at home…You will need endurance and there will be many dark nights of the soul."
• "At the height of Panera’s success, we had thousands if bakery cafes. But what we really had was one bakery cafe done correctly, replicated thousands of times."
• "When others are thinking just about today, I’m thinking 3-5 years in the future. The time to worry about a heart attack is not when you’re in the ambulance in the way to the hospital...We transformed the company in very fundamental ways 4 times. Companies’ systems, processes, and people are often perfectly set up to deliver what mattered yesterday. To survive and thrive in our fast changing world, you must keep transforming, never sitting back in what worked yesterday but always successfully reaching for what will matter tomorrow."

From clarion.today (AI-curated news site)

How to make a Christmas song (check out the last minute of the below CBS Sunday Morning segment for an attempt at a new Christmas song that follows all the patterns)

New Year's Eve in Florida

Harley Finkelstein (President of Shopify)

• "The right entrepreneurs, the best entrepreneurs, they just simply out-care other people."

• “Most people are not willing to look stupid for some period of time. Too many people are too apprehensive. I’ve long believed that getting really really comfortable with being uncomfortable is magic. You can’t be born with that, you learn it. I don’t know anyone who I admire who’s had success and not gone through that period of looking kind of dumb.”

Bret Taylor (founder of Sierra AI, prior creator of Google Maps, CTO Facebook, co-CEO Salesforce, chairman Twitter, board member OpenAI)

• “What will the role of software engineering become as we go from authors of code to operators of code generating machines?”
• “AI is causing really rapid transformation (software engineering, the law, marketing, customer service, etc). If you’re not responding to the facts in front of you and thinking from first principles then the likelihood you’ll make the right decision is almost zero. For example in our AI customer service business, our pricing model only charges our customers for the outcomes (rather than use) given AI can complete a task rather than just help you be more productive. And we work with our customers to deliver more fully configured software for them, because in a world where making software is easier than it ever was before, the delivery model of software probably should change as well.”

Ron Shaich (Panera co-founder, Au Bon Pain co-founder, investor it Cava and Tatte)

• Category design beats competition: Panera didn’t try to out-execute fast food companies, but helped invent the new category of "fast casual". Re-defining the game was more important than playing harder (“If you’re competing head-to-head, you’re already losing.”)
• “The job of a leader is to see what others don’t - yet.”