Personal notes / 02
What I believe
The things I want to carry into my work.
A few convictions, and a notebook of things I’ve saved.
A few favorites
01Practice
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.”
02Conviction
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
03Confidence
“The most beautiful thing you can wear is confidence.”
Start with someone who needs it
The first question I ask is whether the problem is real. The second is whether someone would actually use what I’m building. The technology comes after that.
I like the ambition in ‘make something people want.’ It keeps me honest. A clever system that solves no problem doesn’t excite me. Adding AI to something isn’t an accomplishment by itself. I wouldn’t want to spend an API token on a feature nobody needs.
I want to understand the business well enough to know which work matters, then stay close enough to the product to see whether I got it right.
The experience goes all the way down
A good interface matters. So does understanding what someone meant, answering accurately, responding quickly, and protecting their information. People experience the entire system, even when they can’t see most of it.
In VYNN, that can mean refusing to show a single valuation when the underlying methods disagree. In AutoCodeRover, it means accounting for the code someone kept editing while the agent was working. These are product decisions as much as engineering decisions.
I care about small things because somebody has to live with them every day. A confusing result or a lost edit can undo a lot of otherwise good work.
Do the work when it gets difficult
I believe in hard work. I also believe there are things you learn by struggling that you cannot learn by being told the answer.
Jensen Huang’s point about character being formed through suffering stayed with me. I take it as a reminder to work through setbacks and accept the parts of learning that are uncomfortable. I don’t think difficulty makes a project worthwhile on its own. But when the work matters, I want to be the person who stays with it.
Clarinet has been part of my life for over fifteen years. That is a long time to practise, hear what still needs work, and try again. It’s one of the clearest ways I know that wanting to be good and doing the work are different things.
Have conviction. Keep checking
Building something of your own requires confidence before there is much evidence. I’m comfortable with that. I also want to know when I’m wrong.
That is why I care about evaluation, reproducible results, and being able to trace a decision back to its inputs. In Agent OS, the agent doing the work and the monitor judging it have separate responsibilities. Good intentions are not a verification method.
I want the work to hold up when someone looks closely. That is the standard I’m trying to meet.
05 / The commonplace book
Lines I’ve saved
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”
“Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.”
“It's never too late — never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.”
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths.”
“Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.”
“Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
“Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent.”
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
A line to question. Understanding power interests me; making people afraid to disagree is a poor way to build a team.
“The most beautiful thing you can wear is confidence.”
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.”
“The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.”
“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best.”
“In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.”
“Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.”
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
“Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.”
“The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.”
“Greatness does not come out of intelligence, it comes from character. Character is not formed out of smart people; it is formed out of people who have suffered.”