http://simonwillison.net/2026-03-12T16:28:07+00:00Simon Willison2026-03-12T16:28:07+00:002026-03-12T16:28:07+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/12/les-orchard/#atom-tag

<blockquote cite="https://blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/grief-and-the-ai-split/"><p>Here's what I think is happening: AI-assisted coding is exposing a divide among developers that was always there but maybe less visible.</p> <p>Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The <em>motivation</em> behind the work was invisible because the process was identical.</p> <p>Now there's a fork in the road. You can let the machine write the code and focus on directing what gets built, or you can insist on hand-crafting it. And suddenly the reason you got into this in the first place becomes visible, because the two camps are making different choices at that fork.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/grief-and-the-ai-split/">Les Orchard</a>, Grief and the AI Split</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/careers">careers</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming">ai-assisted-programming</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/deep-blue">deep-blue</a></p>

2009-04-14T08:57:03+00:002009-04-14T08:57:03+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2009/Apr/14/nostalgia/#atom-tag

<blockquote cite="http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/04/13/i-like-revcanonical"><p>You guys are moving on this stuff too fast! Welcome to 2002, when lots of us had more spare time than employment and we deployed new crap like this on our blogs and sites daily.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/04/13/i-like-revcanonical">Les Orchard</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/nostalgia">nostalgia</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/revcanonical">revcanonical</a></p>

2009-04-13T10:41:40+00:002009-04-13T10:41:40+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2009/Apr/13/like/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/04/13/i-like-revcanonical">I like rev=&quot;canonical&quot;</a></strong></p> Les Orchard summarises the current debate over what colour to paint the rev=“canonical” bikeshed. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/revcanonical">revcanonical</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/urls">urls</a></p>

2009-01-25T10:29:58+00:002009-01-25T10:29:58+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2009/Jan/25/tags/#atom-tag

<blockquote cite="http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/01/18/tags-do-work-for-me-at-least#comment-384509"><p>Tagging is like a salt water fish that lots of people thought was pretty and started trying to stick in fresh water tanks. I don’t think it thrives everywhere people have tried to stick it and not everyone who’s tried to clone tagging has gotten all the important parts right.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2009/01/18/tags-do-work-for-me-at-least#comment-384509">Les Orchard</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/analogy">analogy</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/tagging">tagging</a></p>

2008-07-04T22:38:01+00:002008-07-04T22:38:01+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2008/Jul/4/queue/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2008/07/04/queue-everything-and-delight-everyone">Queue everything and delight everyone</a></strong></p> Les Orchard explains why I’ve been getting interested in queues recently: “One of the problems it seems most modern web apps face is the tendency to want to do everything all at once, and all in the same code that responds directly to a user.” <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/queues">queues</a></p>

2007-04-20T06:50:51+00:002007-04-20T06:50:51+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2007/Apr/20/libketama/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://www.last.fm/user/RJ/journal/2007/04/10/392555/">libketama</a></strong></p> A consistent hashing algorithm for memcache clients, from the team at last.fm. <p><small></small>Via <a href="http://del.icio.us/deusx">Les Orchard</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/hashing">hashing</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/lastfm">lastfm</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/memcache">memcache</a></p>

2007-02-15T22:35:57+00:002007-02-15T22:35:57+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2007/Feb/15/twitter/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://twitter.com/lmorchard/statuses/4574763">Les Orchard: &quot;Web 3.0 will have Galactica-style angled corners.&quot;</a></strong></p> Here’s hoping. <p><small></small>Via <a href="http://www.whump.com/moreLikeThis/2007/02/06/so-twitter-we-all/">Bill Humphries</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/corners">corners</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/funny">funny</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/twitter">twitter</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/web3">web3</a></p>

2006-04-22T19:09:33+00:002006-04-22T19:09:33+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2006/Apr/22/s/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://decafbad.com/blog/2006/04/21/an-s3-ajax-wiki">An S3 AJAX Wiki</a></strong></p> Les continues to innovate against S3. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ajax">ajax</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/aws">aws</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/javascript">javascript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/s3">s3</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/wiki">wiki</a></p>

2005-06-09T23:18:00+00:002005-06-09T23:18:00+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2005/Jun/9/magic/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://www.decafbad.com/blog/2005/06/08/greasemonkey_magic">Magic Microformat Forms Redux, Now with GreaseMonkey!</a></strong></p> Les Orchard gets in to Greasemonkey—with accompanying screencast. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/greasemonkey">greasemonkey</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/microformats">microformats</a></p>

2003-04-05T23:50:31+00:002003-04-05T23:50:31+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2003/Apr/5/personalWebCache/#atom-tag

<p>Jesse Lawrence is also looking to <a href="http://soniceast.sytes.net/~jalaw/blog/archive/6.php" title="Rss Aggregator">implement his own aggregator</a>:</p> <blockquote cite="http://soniceast.sytes.net/~jalaw/blog/archive/6.php"><p> I've been searching high and low for an RSS reader that I'm happy with and that works on Linux, but so far I've been unsuccessful. So, last night I started coding my own. It's going to be more of a personal communication system, though, not just an RSS reader. I want it to have email reading and writing capabilities, and also webpage caching, through the use of javascript bookmarks. This way, when you find a page you like, hit a bookmark, and it gets saved to you system, in a way which makes it easy to find. </p></blockquote> <p>I'd been thinking about implementing a personal web proxy (<a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/PersonalWebProxy" title="PersonalWebProxy aka Agent Frank">inspired by Les Orchard</a>) with some kind of interface for telling it to cache the page I last visited but a simple bookmarklet sounds like a much better solution. I don't think I'd want it as part of an aggregator though. <em>Starts tinkering...</em></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a></p>

2003-01-16T22:29:17+00:002003-01-16T22:29:17+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2003/Jan/16/appleScriptBlogging/#atom-tag

<p>Les Orchard <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/news_archives/000383.phtml" title="Folder Actions + AppleScript = Desktop Blogging">describes</a> an intriguing blogging tool built with AppleScript that posts links to a weblog when they are dragged on to a special folder on the OS X desktop.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/blogging">blogging</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/applescript">applescript</a></p>

2002-12-09T12:29:21+00:002002-12-09T12:29:21+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2002/Dec/9/personalWebProxies/#atom-tag

<p>Les Orchard is <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/news_archives/000346.phtml" title="Technology Ramblings :: Personal Web Proxies">considering building his own web proxy</a>. I had never thought about the possibilities of these technologies beyond caching before, but Les's post has really got me thinking. I often find myself searching around for a web page I visited a few months ago and can only vaguely remember - a proxy generated searchable history (I never got the hang of using my browser's) would be a very useful tool. In addition, the ability to cache local copies of useful documents to preserve them should the original ever go offline would be very handy. How about a proxy with an accompanying small GUI desktop application which shows your recent browsing history (the last 15 pages or so) and allows you to mark documents for bookmarking / preserving? The application and proxy server could communicate via <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language - Remote Procedure Calls">XML-RPC</acronym>.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/les-orchard">les-orchard</a></p>