In September 2012, GitHub tells me I made 198 commits. At that time, I was working for a mobile games company in Mountain View, and I think I’d just moved from working on the games to working on the SDK. I’m sure I was trying to prove something - in September I should have been returning to college for my final year, but I’d decided to stay in Mountain View and work instead. I also really liked working on the SDK, much more than working on the games, and I had absolutely no work-life balance whatsoever - all my personal relationships at that time were directly connected to the company, although many of those friendships were very impactful. In any case, 198 commits, the most I’ve done in a month in my life.
In January 2026, I made 212 commits, and I also played with my dog, went climbing, went running, spent time with people, worked my actual job for 12 days, and generally lived a much more balanced and happier life. I worked on tons of little side projects and had FAR more fun building stuff than ever before. It’s not exactly apples to oranges and it feels weird to claim commits by claude as my own, I suppose, but the intent/direction/wish/taste was still mine, and to be honest I don’t think I’d claim commits I made in 2012 without misgivings either.
Here’s my Tada list for January 2026:
- half a dozen little CLI tools
- a little tombstone for flax.ie
- a new version of DnDoodle
- Ayay, a pretty simple sampler
- WIP Formula E predictor league thing
For probably the last decade+, I thought I would never enjoy building things again. It’s strange to be so grateful for the thing that will probably, eventually, take my job, but man, I’m so glad for Claude Code.