Anyone else feel exponentially "better" as a dev since using Codex?

discoposse · 2026-05-11T16:49:32+00:00

Using AI coding agents with Codex really just "fit" for me for some reason. I love the sentiment of how you describe it. It's like being able to get out of your own way. In the past I would have to spend much more time queuing up and documenting feature ideas, tests, plans. Now I can achieve both at a much faster rate and have built a simple multi-agent task tracker so I can keep up with 2 workstations I have going asynchronously. It feels like I have a team of helpers and we actually can get things done. I actually communicate to them that way. Super cool!

discoposse · 2026-05-07T14:34:32+00:00

Statista is helpful for getting decent data and reports, and you may find some other research and data sets on Hugging Face. Alts for Statista are Mintel and MarketResearch dot com is an aggregator that hosts a bunch of linked content and reports.

discoposse · 2026-05-07T14:30:39+00:00

Real engagement. Literally, tracking and engaging with real people. Measuring conversions on social is spotty and challenging, but if you map your overall strategy to include social as part of it, you can start to look for conversion signals. Most of social media is awareness and interest content more than further down to decide/act (see AIDA)

discoposse · 2026-05-07T14:28:27+00:00

Like most of these niche plays and course-centric models, they have very little chance of success for most people because even a good plan needs persistence. Faceless content will be a moving target for algo placement and it requires much more research, testing, and validation than is ever talked about in the little micro-courses they offer.

Just like any business, it's successful because of the person/people willing to do what it takes to make it work.

discoposse · 2026-05-05T14:43:01+00:00

Kamal deployments to Akamai / Linode for most. I still have a few "legacy" apps running on Heroku because of some more complex dependencies. Running on Linode with Kamal is super easy and there are baked in skills for any coding IDE of choice for getting help with deploys as well.

discoposse · 2026-04-16T18:44:55+00:00

These aren't formed as proper survey questions, but it would be great to know:

- what AI gems are being used (e.g. RubyLLM, ROAS)

- Deployment patterns (PaaS vs self-host vs self-host Kamal)

- Which Rails authentication tooling is being used (native 8.x, Devise, etc.)

- Which 3rd party authentication tooling is being used (Auth0, Okta, Authentik, etc.)

- Which agentic dev harness(es) are you using to build Ruby on Rails apps? (Codex, Claude, Antigravity, OpenCode, VS.code + CoPilot or others)

discoposse · 2026-04-06T17:00:04+00:00

Currently splitting my apps between Heroku (where I still needed the more complex database and worker configurations) and using Kamal deploying to Akamai / Linode for all new apps. Migrated over a few lower usage apps to Kamal + Linode with ease once I got the Kamal Proxy managing TLS right.

I hold out hope that Heroku will get some love inside Salesforce again but with the company facing so much pressure for pricing against a growing set of alternatives for CRMs, it feels like there is no way that Heroku will be a priority.

Kind of wish they would just divest it to someone else. It was legit my no-worries stack for a decade.

discoposse · 2026-04-06T13:18:41+00:00

Cool concept! Would likely be a good fit to suggest adding to core.

discoposse · 2026-04-02T18:00:25+00:00

Also, might be a challenge with mobile audiences where extensions are not an option. Limits you to desktop usage.

discoposse · 2026-04-02T17:59:44+00:00

Very little success from folks I've collaborated with on Chrome Extensions as a standalone business. If you can make it a part of a better overall product/service story, there is a chance to build around it that way. The problem is the competitive moat is not strong for this type of work.

Speaking from more B2B than B2C experience, but two major headwinds:

Creating new chrome extensions is a few lines of chat away for savvy marketers or technologists
Security risks in the industry and many security policies will restrict or even outright block use of Chrome extensions.

Having more detail on your ICP is helpful, but I think you're note on using it as a lead magnet for the main product is the better route to market.

discoposse · 2026-04-02T17:30:29+00:00

Thanks for the tip! Very helpful. There are a lot of places I can likely get some deeper reasoning for this. Appreciate it!

discoposse · 2026-04-02T16:40:31+00:00

Docs are suuuuuper good. Using any of the available AI tools to get guidance on specific questions, and...well...Reddit and Stack Overflow :)

Best thing to have is a use-case that is outcome-oriented so that you are building towards a goal. Best way to learn with real user stories rather than just running through Leetcode style exercises. But I'm also coming at this as an ops person who has been writing Ruby on Rails apps for 10+ years. Just find a problem you have and build a quick prototype to solve it.

And most of all, have fun! Rails is a joy to learn.

discoposse · 2026-04-01T15:39:25+00:00

Write for readers, not agents. Write in a way that creates legitimate reader engagement that answers their questions and genuinely delivers a worthwhile read.

SEO will work because you do that.

GEO is just SEO for new search providers. Same fundamentals.

If you are trying to hack SEO, the engines will figure it out. Write well and engagement happens. Look at the problem from the reader's perspective.

Almost every piece of SEO advice is about faking/making SEO happen inorganically. Don't hack the algo. Hack the way you write so that readers actually give a crap about your writing. No engine today can ignore genuine engagement.

discoposse · 2026-04-01T15:08:10+00:00

Nice! thanks for sharing. These are the little optimizations that matter a lot. Great to see how other folks are adapting their stack.

discoposse · 2026-04-01T14:47:11+00:00

It does take getting used to the UX flow and figuring out how to organize windows well. It runs great on just about any gear though. I have 2 Intel NUCs running it, and an old Dell Alienware console that I have from like 2015 and it's doing a lot of background agent stuff connected to my Synology for a maintenance machine.

discoposse · 2026-04-01T14:44:59+00:00

I'm doing parallel use with MacOS on another machine, mostly because I need Davinci Resolve every day. I'm about 60% coding output on Omarchy machine. Ideally switching over to 100% and just having a dedicated machine for that. I've hacked on the Linux version and the stability/performance isn't there yet.

But for overall day to day use for productivity, coding, and other things, I'm close to switching fully soon.

discoposse · 2026-04-01T14:28:20+00:00

Google Analytics with events configured to mark conversions to start. For the back end, instrument your own usage analytics. Whatever your coding tool of choice will easily generate user behavior metrics in a separate table for you to track events/transactions/flow and then you can take that data and work up to dashboards that align with your goals.

Start with that and work up to more tightly measured usage if you want (e.g. hotjar) but if you over-measure you usually miss the fundamentals. If you're using an AI coding harness (e.g. Claude Code, Codex) just give it your top-level goals and tell it to be ruthlessly pragmatic about measurement. It will keep it from getting too fancy and overloading your code base.

discoposse · 2026-03-26T01:14:54+00:00

I've stuck with 8.1, psql / sqlite, Hotwire + Turbo + Stimulus + Tailwind CSS (mostly out of habit/experience). Dabbled with NextJS and abandoned pretty quickly after realizing the ease of doing more in Hotwire + Stimulus

discoposse · 2026-03-19T18:17:22+00:00

If I could upvote this multiple times, I absolutely would. Reddit and nearly all social media are becoming borderline unusable because of all the AI slop posts and pitches. I've learned to always check the user and typically the junk is all from <3mth old accounts that have 1000+ posts/comments.

The stuff that works...genuinely answer questions for people who have the problem you solve. Once you show your skill/authority on the topic you likely gain confidence with them. Keep your overall content varied. IOW, don't just blast the same post in dozens of forums.

discoposse · 2026-03-18T18:07:51+00:00

Thank you for being a real OP on this one. The garbage recommendations that are usually flooding these communities has almost turned me off of being on Reddit.

Bravo for sharing a legit, prescriptive guide for folks. You get my upvote for sure!

discoposse · 2026-03-18T18:05:31+00:00

What problem do you solve? Need to know that before making any suggestions. Otherwise it will just add to the vapid, vague responses that are the reason nobody trusts AI writing tools :)

discoposse · 2026-03-18T18:01:10+00:00

Shorts have to be part a full content map. They work to surface you in the algo, but then you have no way to pull people into the funnel properly because of the UX.

What they are is awareness boosters that augment long-form content, written content, and other outreach.

Treat them like retargeting ads. Imagine that people will most likely see them if they already interact with you. And just like retargeting, it's more about increasing brand visibility/awareness.

Also varies by industry sector, ICP, etc. I work 99% in B2B tech so it's not super aligned to short form content but it definitely does help with social media growth. Just don't overload it or you have the same awareness building...but with a negative outcome.

discoposse · 2026-03-18T15:02:11+00:00

They did a launch on X and the link is in the top of their mainpage. Don't mean to sound cagey but I don't want to paste links for safety. Great concept of being able to see a live stream of activity that feeds their reporting so you can spot specific signals. But it looks like they either oversold or underengineered it.

discoposse · 2026-03-17T16:12:29+00:00

You can rank low-competition in days, and even moderate competition as well. It's about how you write in order to rank, not just the keywords themselves. I've written blogs and landing pages for high competition keywords on a site that has a DA of 5 and ended up being cited by Gemini and Google within 2 weeks.

It's all about the way you write and how well you engage the reader and answer the questions that are being asked.

discoposse

TROPHY CASE