Archive - Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky

233. "The Illusion of Thinking" — Thoughts on This Important Paper

This is a fantastic paper. I just love it. tl;dr AI is not human. Anthropomorphization has been bad for AI, LLMs, and Chat. Clippy walked so today's AI…

Jun 8 •

Steven Sinofsky

May 2025

232. From Typewriters to Transformers: AI is Just the Next Tools Abstraction

AI is a tool-driven revolution. That’s why it unnerves people. Freeman Dyson said in 1993, “Scientific revolutions are more often driven by new tools…

May 30 •

Steven Sinofsky

April 2025

231. When It Comes to Tariffs, China is Different

Much has been made of tariffs, but few have talked about the myriad of soft costs when it comes to international trade. Sharing my personal experience…

Apr 9 •

Steven Sinofsky

March 2025

230. MCP - It's Hot, But Will It Win?

There's a long history of "middleware" in our industry. Everyone wants it. There's always a hot one, but it rarely makes to the finish line and often…

Mar 28 •

Steven Sinofsky

229. "Tech Goes Hardcore" ... Again.

Our industry is cyclic but the latest wave of efficiency harkens back to the time when companies told us not to be penny wise v. pound foolish. It…

Mar 25 •

Steven Sinofsky

January 2025

228. DeepSeek Has Been Inevitable and Here's Why (History Tells Us)

DeepSeek was certain to happen. The only unknown was who was going to do it. The choices were a startup or someone outside the current center of US AI…

Jan 27 •

Steven Sinofsky

227. CES 2025: An Abundance of (AI) Experimentation

CES proved a transition year with many established product lines showing incremental improvements or focusing on B2B areas and new product lines showing…

Jan 13 •

Steven Sinofsky

Remembering Mike Maples, Sr.

The computer industry lost a legendary executive this week with the passing of Mike Maples, Sr.

Jan 10 •

Steven Sinofsky

December 2024

225. Systems Ideas that Sound Good But Almost Never Work—"Let's just…"

Some engineering patterns that sound good but almost never work as intended

Dec 28, 2024 •

Steven Sinofsky

224. Books to Read and Gift (2024 EoY Edition)

A Books I Read in 2024 list. Some of them I enjoyed. Some of them drove me bonkers. I like that part of reading. Hope you enjoy this list.

Dec 1, 2024 •

Steven Sinofsky

November 2024

223. On the Toll of Being a Disruptor

It is very easy to be disruptive, but being a disruptor is enormously difficult technically and emotionally

Nov 26, 2024 •

Steven Sinofsky

October 2024

222. Automating Processes with Software is HARD

We have decades of experience trying to automate processes. My biggest lesson is that automation is not about the easy and known flow, but about…

Oct 3, 2024 •

Steven Sinofsky

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