A→Z · the editorial lens · rev. May 2026 14 terms

duran, alexis

n. — a working glossary of his terms: the subset of the ledger he wants remembered.

14 shown
Context /ˈkɒntɛkst/

What AI coding is actually about. It compounds — so stop rebuilding it from scratch every session.

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note · on compound engineering

The leverage was never "the AI writes code." It's that effort can stack — each pass inherits the last one's context instead of starting cold.

Used well, it frees your attention for the interesting part: establishing non-obvious relationships between things, exploring, building — not re-explaining your codebase for the tenth time. Used badly, it goes sideways building from zero, every time.

see also: Ownership · Craft

Craft /krɑːft/

The willingness to redo the part nobody will ever scroll back to look at.

see also: Footgun · Shipping

Distribution /ˌdɪstrɪˈbjuːʃn/

The 80% nobody warns you about. Building the app was the easy part.

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note · workout timer · App Store, Jan 20 2026

Shipped my first solo iOS app — a workout timer — on Jan 20, 2026, sure the hard part was behind me. It wasn't.

Getting a good thing in front of the people who'd want it is a separate, harder craft than making it. I'd built plenty before, but never my own — and never had to make a stranger care.

see also: Production · Estimate

Duran, Alexis n. proper

Paid to write software. Compelled to speak. Talks too much; revises later. Reachable at hello@alexisduran.com.

see also: Craft · Tactical

Estimate /ˈɛstɪmət/

A lie told to a calendar.

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note · on estimating solo work

We estimate our own side projects as if we were a company — as if a team had already weighed the options and decided this was the right thing to build.

Solo, that machinery doesn't exist. Building your own products demands far more than coding. The estimate is the smallest of your problems; knowing what's worth building at all is the real one.

see also: Distribution · Craft

Footgun /ˈfʊt.ɡʌn/

A feature that makes the easy path the wrong one. Good engineers earn their reputation by avoiding them.

see also: Craft · Shipping

Libardo /liˈβaɾðo/ · n. proper

The 'Libardo' in Libardo Alexis Duran Martinez — my real first name, the one only my parents use, and only when I'm in trouble.

see also: Duran, Alexis

No es solo código n. proper

A weekly retrospective podcast — a colleague and I thinking out loud about web programming, half to teach others, half to teach ourselves. 2019–2024.

see also: Craft · Shipping

Ownership /ˈəʊnəʃɪp/

The opposite of "the AI got it wrong." You shipped it. The model doesn't sign its name — you do.

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note · on owning your tools

A model is a tool, and tools don't carry blame. The moment "the AI did it" becomes an excuse, you've outsourced the one thing that was actually yours: judgment.

Use whatever gets you there faster. Just don't pretend the output stops being yours because something else typed it first.

see also: Vibe coder · Context

Production /prəˈdʌkʃn/

The only environment that tells the truth. Your local bubble is a flatterer.

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note · Hyrox app · App Store, May 14 2026

You can manual-test inside your own assumptions forever and learn nothing. I shipped a Hyrox app on May 14, days before my own SOLO debut — and real users found what was fundamentally useless in an afternoon.

Not broken — useless. The things I'd assumed were enough to matter weren't the ones that did, and no careful clicking in my own bubble would ever have told me. Take the leap, or stay comfortably wrong.

see also: Distribution · Context

Rausch /ʁaʊ̯ʃ/ · n. [German]

Nietzsche's name for the heightened state art comes out of — proof the philosophers were mapping peak performance a century before the psychologists arrived.

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note · after Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

I chase it on purpose, hardest in endurance sport. Sport isn't only about health or aesthetics; it's the most reliable place I know to meet my own weakness — which emotions I can endure, how I talk to myself under load, whether I can be my own partner when it stops being fun.

That self-knowledge doesn't stay there. It shows up in a hard conversation with a manager, or the moment mid-argument you realize you were the one who was wrong.

see also: Tactical

Shipping /ˈʃɪpɪŋ/

The act that converts an opinion into evidence. Until then it's a draft of a belief.

see also: Distribution · Production

Tactical /ˈtæktɪkl/ · adj.

How you treat your time once you stop accepting "I don't have time" as a reason.

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note · on spending time on purpose

"I don't have time" and "I wish I could" are how people justify mediocrity to themselves. Plenty of people do far more than I do — the ceiling sits well above the social default.

The difference is rarely talent or hours in the day. It's whether you spend them on purpose.

see also: Rausch · Craft

Vibe coder /vʌɪb ˈkəʊdər/ · n.

A scapegoat invented in 2025. The tools didn't lower the bar — they stopped hiding where yours already was.

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note · on a term that split the room

There have always been people who care about the work and people who ship whatever compiles. AI didn't create that split; it removed the friction that used to disguise it.

The tooling isn't the tell. Your process is.

see also: Ownership · Craft

No entries under that verb — yet.

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