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m_m_carvalhoon Materials innovation has a scale-up problem, not discovery

In software, AI seems to have inverted the equation.

Building is cheap. Distribution, differentiation and discovering unmet demand are becoming the expensive parts.

m_m_carvalhoon Synthesis is harder than analysis

AI has made me appreciate synthesis much more.

Understanding existing code or generating possible solutions is getting easier. The hard part is still deciding what to build, what not to build, and how independent ideas fit together into something coherent.

In my experience, AI reduced the cost of implementation far more than it reduced the cost of synthesis.

m_m_carvalhoon Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)

I'm not quitting, but AI has completely changed my priorities.

Building software has become dramatically easier over the last year. The hard part is no longer creating products—it's getting people to discover and trust them.

I spend far more time thinking about distribution today than implementation. That's a shift I didn't expect.

m_m_carvalhoon Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

As a solo developer, I rarely struggle to remember what changed yesterday. I often struggle to remember why I made a decision six months ago.

Conventional commits are most valuable to me as historical context rather than as a release-management tool.

The larger the project becomes, the more useful that context gets.

m_m_carvalhoon Technical Interviews Reject the Wrong Engineers

As a former IT instructor, I've seen students who performed brilliantly in exams and interviews but struggled when faced with real-world ambiguity.

I've also seen quieter people who were average in interviews become excellent builders once they had a real problem to solve.

Interviews are useful, but the ability to ship, maintain and improve real projects should probably carry more weight.

m_m_carvalhoon Show HN: ShadowCat – file transfer through QR Codes in a Browser

Clever use of QR for file transfer. How does it handle larger files? Is there chunking + reassembly on the receiving end?

m_m_carvalhoon Open source Kanban desktop app that runs parallel agents on every card

The parallel agents concept is interesting. How does it handle state sync between agents when they're modifying the same board? Or is there built-in conflict resolution?

m_m_carvalhoon Models.dev: open-source database of AI model specs, pricing, and capabilities

Interesting approach. The unified pricing table is helpful, but I'd love to see latency benchmarks across providers – that's often the hidden cost beyond price/token.

m_m_carvalhoon Show HN: Waputer – The WebAssembly Computer

Tested the Nako IDE - got "hello world" running! But I'm a bit confused about the architecture.

Is Waputer a full OS kernel or primarily a dev environment? The three components (School/Terminal/Editor) seem related but I can't quite connect the dots.

What's the typical workflow - write in Nako → WASM → run where exactly?

Cool concept, just trying to understand the pieces!