#46 — Encouraging productive struggle
When struggle is properly processed, computing students learn
Just a small personal note: I’m currently on my way to Helsinki, where I’ll be doing a doctoral research visit at Aalto University. I’m super excited about the opportunity to spend time researching there with Juho Leinonen and the rest of the group. Don’t worry, the plan is not to disappear. I’ll do my best to keep the newsletter going every Friday. And if you have any recs for things to see, do, or eat in Helsinki (or anywhere else in Finland), feel free to send them my way.
Reflections
Among computing students solving Parsons problems, I am observing two contrasting behavioral patterns in my current project. Some students appear to engage in productive struggle where multiple incorrect attempts are accompanied by gradual improvement in correctness over time. Others display behavior more consistent with random guessing, repeatedly submitting tile arrangements without a clear strategy and appearing primarily motivated by completing the task quickly rather than learning from the feedback.
Another example I’ve experienced personally: in 2018 I walked part of the Camino de Santiago (yes, I survived the destroyed feet). And I realized that the goal is not really arriving in Santiago, but walking the path itself. It is the journey that educates you, that transforms you. That piercing pain in your feet, the blisters on the soles, slowly purifies you. In the end, it is the path toward something, not only the destination, that enriches you, matures you, and changes you.
In this regard, I found an interview I read last weekend with Francesc Torralba, professor of humanities, ethics, and anthropology at Blanquerna, both thought-provoking and illuminating. The interview, conducted by Anatxu Zabalbeascoa for El País Semanal, left me reflecting on many topics. Anatxu notes that he has been teaching for decades, and you can tell by the way he speaks, his voice loud and clear, turning the same idea over with different words until it lands. She also notes that beyond his tone, he comes across as warm and approachable. After reading it carefully, I think his words could be very useful for those of us in computing education.
Nothing replaces experience. The difficult ones are especially formative. The ones you neither expect nor want are the ones that transform you. Karl Jaspers spoke of limit situations: they put you to the test. Experience builds emotional intelligence. You learn that when you act without thinking, you usually go off the rails and hurt others in the process.
Aristotle called them instrumental friends. The ones who surround you when you have money or success. When you go through something terrible and you could be difficult company because you’re feeling rage or pain, everyone disappears except for your true friend. Adversity is the ultimate test of friendship.
Failures are opportunities for learning. A student comes to me in February having failed everything. I ask him what he’s learned. ‘That I can’t do so many things at once. That I’m scattered.’ What do we do with failure? We blame someone else: the teacher, the referee... When failure is truly processed, instead of being pinned on someone else, we learn from it.
When you speak from experience, you communicate what has moved you. I had spoken a great deal about grief before my son died. When someone speaks in the first person, the room goes quiet. Why? Because ChatGPT has no experience. It feeds on sorting data. Saint Teresa says: I will not speak of anything I have not experienced myself, once or many times.
To live, we need a horizon. And each person has to forge their own. Hope means believing it’s possible to make difficult horizons real. It takes time, perseverance, and community. You won’t be able to do it alone. There is no hope without fear, because hope is not certainty.
Experience builds confidence (in yourself and in others). Pure doubt leads to paralysis. But you need the yin and the yang, affirmation and negation. Life is an act of trust and hope.
Kierkegaard, in Upbuilding Discourses, says: ‘Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it.’ That is: every decision carries regret with it. But that shouldn’t stop you from deciding. You have to choose and learn to make peace with the anxiety that comes with any decision. A life without anxiety doesn’t exist.
Only those who love are truly alive. There are people who are alive and no longer here. If you don’t love, what do you have left? Whoever loves is set in motion. And suffers: the price of love is suffering.
Another perspective on struggle that I also found quite thought-provoking comes from Brandon Wen, Creative Director of the Fashion Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (featured in this same issue of El País Semanal):
It’s not only about money. The students are pushed very hard. The focus is on developing a personal vision. The school is small and works with great depth. That is its strength.
Students are required to stay in the studio from nine to seven. They cannot leave until everyone has spoken with the professors. It is a form of training in sustained engagement with the creative process.
This is how students demonstrate commitment. By the fourth year, the faculty trusts them to work independently. The second and third years are about building the foundations and cohesion that carry into the master’s program, which is described almost as a final judgment. At that stage students are given more freedom, but they are expected to deliver the complete package. Sometimes they simply need someone to push them harder.
The methodology, centered around highly intensive one-on-one critiques, involves an almost brutal level of introspection. Students are given four years to discover themselves creatively, yet by five in the afternoon, after only cutting half the fabric, some are already on the edge of mental collapse. It becomes understandable why, out of roughly sixty students admitted each academic year, only around sixteen ultimately graduate.
The students are not trained specifically for the business side of fashion. The emphasis is on creativity and on developing a personal artistic vision. The school does not believe it is beneficial to interrupt that formation too early with business-oriented subjects; first, they believe, students need to build that artistic “bubble” deeply enough to become exceptional.
What they can guarantee is that graduates become extraordinarily prepared for the harshness of the fashion industry precisely because of the intensity of the training. They become highly resourceful. By the time they finish the master’s program, they are capable of acting quickly, calmly, and with clarity.
If you’re interested in exploring the idea of productive struggle further, this discussion thread on the Computing Educators discourse is highly recommended. It features reflections from Raj Venkat, Kristin Stephens-Martinez, and Geoffrey Challen.
🔍 Resources for Learning and Teaching Computing
→ Recursive Islands
Great example to explain recursive algorithms visually: real geography behaving like recursion. What I like about this example is that recursion becomes intuitive before it becomes formal. You can see the nested structure, the levels, and the repetition of the same pattern at different scales. Much easier to grasp than jumping straight into factorials or Fibonacci. Also a good reminder that some of the best computing explanations come from unexpected places.
→ Being oncall taught me everything
One way of understanding how software works is by watching it work and sometimes inevitably fail in production, or by patching together someone else’s broken pieces. Great piece by Yao Yue on the experience of oncall, the type of job in tech that makes you read the part of the codebase nobody owns.
→ Visualize the Brrr
Really interesting project by Kyle Yu: BrrrViz offers interactive visual explanations of GPU programming concepts, including architecture, execution model, memory hierarchy, synchronization, and optimization techniques. I’ll probably use this resource in my Fall 2026 graduate computer architecture course.
→ The Neural Geometry Series
Fascinating line of research from Goodfire on neural geometry and mechanistic interpretability. The idea is that understanding the internal geometric structure of neural networks may be key to truly understanding, debugging, and steering these systems.
→ Foundations of Computing (Automata, Languages, Computability)
Chuck Allison has released Foundations of Computing, an undergraduate textbook on automata theory, formal languages, computability, and reductions, with Python examples plus free sample chapters, exercises, and syllabus materials on GitHub.
🦄 Quick bytes from the industry
→ AI-Allowed Interviews
Fardeen Khimani recently launched Rounds, a technical interviewing platform where AI is explicitly allowed. I’ve mentioned this trend before in this newsletter: many startups are moving away from traditional LeetCode-style interviews (some already were) toward assessments that look much closer to real engineering work, often motivated by founders’ own frustrations with LeetCode-style interviews.
Meanwhile, big tech companies and Fortune 500 firms still rely heavily on LeetCode because it is objective, and remains an efficient way to evaluate coding fundamentals, DSA, and general problem-solving ability. And to be fair, not everyone is naturally good at those skills, and practicing them can still be valuable preparation for engineering work.
Fardeen’s argument is that this model no longer fully reflects the reality of modern software engineering because the nature of the work itself has changed dramatically. If code becomes increasingly cheap to generate, then other abilities become more important: system design, deep debugging, human judgment, product thinking, incident resolution, communication, demo presentation, and collaboration with AI systems. He also argues that LeetCode interviews are highly gameable and tend to reward people who have enough free time to grind problems while disadvantaging equally capable candidates who do not.
According to him, junior engineers now need to be much stronger in system design, highly technical in their use of AI tools, and capable of thinking from a product perspective. AI has made judgment and critical thinking more important, not less. Engineers increasingly need to navigate ambiguous scenarios, debug difficult issues using traces and logs, evaluate AI-generated outputs, and reason at a higher level of abstraction. Those are skills that largely come through practice and real experience.
He also makes an important point that AI is creating even more software to maintain, ultimately empowering engineers. That’s why he emphasizes the importance of continuing to train junior engineers and reassures people worried about entry-level roles: companies still need talent pipelines.
His advice to CS majors is interesting: seek real-world experience, participate in hackathons, build products, improve communication and presentation skills, maybe even start a company. In his view, this is a particularly good moment to be a builder. Conviction, and passion matter.
He also strongly defends the value of a CS degree. The fundamentals give you the ability to reason about systems, roadmap products, and understand what is actually being built. According to him, that foundational knowledge becomes even more valuable in an AI-assisted world because it allows people to use these tools faster and more effectively. Finally, he points to AI startups, hardware, physical intelligence, humanoids, and robotics as some of the hottest areas right now.
→ Dwarkesh Goes Inside Jane Street's Latest AI Data Center
Modern data centers are much more than rows of servers. Behind large-scale compute there’s an entire world of liquid cooling systems, power infrastructure, fiber networks, leak detection, and highly coordinated engineering. Really fun and nerdy tour of the physical infrastructure powering modern AI and compute.
→ How many tokens do you spend?
Honestly, I have no idea how many tokens I consume. But apparently this growing AI compute spending already has a name: the YC crowd calls it tokenmaxxing. I’ve read that companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce are even creating internal rankings to reward employees who consume the most AI resources.
I can see the logic. The idea is probably to reorganize work around AI systems and encourage experimentation but I also wonder whether this creates unhealthy incentives: prototypes with no real intention of reaching production, endless AI loops, etc.
It leaves me with an internal debate. Shouldn’t this be treated more as an efficiency variable rather than as a signal of commitment, internal status, or professional identity?
🌎 Computing Education Community
CRA-E has shared the recordings from its Career Landscape Workshop Series on teaching-focused academic careers in computing, covering the landscape of teaching-oriented positions, preparation strategies, and the application process. Shared by Kayley McDonald.
A4NE 2026, the SIGCOMM workshop on Networking Education for the AI Generation, is accepting submissions on AI and networking education ahead of its Aug. 17 hybrid event co-located with SIGCOMM in Denver. Shared by Ranysha Ware.
The 2026 Illinois CS Summer Teaching Workshop (June 10–11, virtual and free) brings together computing instructors to discuss CS teaching practices, new directions, and emerging ideas in computing education. Shared by Max Fowler, Yael Gertner, Pablo Robles Granda, and Harsha Srimath Tirumala.
UKICER 2026 has extended the deadline for RIPPA proposals to June 15. These multi-institutional “Research in Practice Project Activities” aim to foster collaborative computing education research across institutions and experience levels. Shared by Olga Petrovska and Cristina Alexandru.
A Frontiers in Computer Science special issue on Cognitive Processes in AI-Mediated Problem Solving is seeking work on how AI affects cognition, metacognition, creativity, bias, and learning, including applications in CS education and human-AI interaction. Shared by Liat Nakar.
EngageCSEdu is seeking classroom-tested OER submissions for CS0, CS1, Data Structures, Discrete Math, HCI, Ethics, and GenAI-related computing activities, with a focus on engaging and inclusive teaching practices. Shared by Brian O’Neill and Olivier St-Cyr.
Virginia Tech’s Echolab is recruiting instructors who use live coding for a paid user study ($75) evaluating a prototype system designed to support interactive classroom exercises during live coding lectures. Shared by Daniel Manesh.
University of Alabama researcher is seeking software engineering instructors to help evaluate an adaptive learning platform that provides supplemental materials, quizzes, and personalized support for students in SE courses. Shared by Jeffrey Carver.
UNSW’s Day of AI Australia and the spinout Capture the Narrative are hiring a full-stack engineer focused on GenAI and cloud technologies to build interactive AI literacy experiences as part of a Google.org-funded initiative. Shared by Jake Renzella.
Stanford’s Center on Early Childhood is recruiting a postdoctoral scholar to work at the intersection of language development, education, linguistics, and computer science in collaboration with researchers including Monica Ellwood-Lowe, Meg Cychosz, and Dan Jurafsky.
A new paper by Sue Sentance and colleagues in Computer Science Education analyzes how primary and secondary computing teachers across the UK and Ireland teach computing and which classroom resources they rely on, based on a survey of around 500 educators.
Carnegie Mellon is hiring a recent or soon-to-finish PhD with experience in human-subjects research to support early-stage commercialization of university technologies, with interest from HCI, CS, social science, information science, and related fields. Shared by Lorrie Cranor.
🤔 Thought(s) For You to Ponder…
Magnifica Humanitas is now available! It is the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate and focuses on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. The Pope signed it on May 15, the same date marking the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum by Leo XIII, the historic encyclical widely considered the foundational document of Catholic Social Teaching.
Summaries of the encyclical that I particularly liked:
This article by Diego Garrocho in Ethic (Spanish)
I also enjoyed this quick overview from my favorite Vatican analyst, Katie Prejean McGrady (English)
A summary from ECCLESIA (Spanish)
An analysis by Fr. Rafael Belda, CVMD, deputy director of Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos (Spanish)
A piece on the encyclical’s magisterial, intellectual, and cultural influences (Spanish)
A compilation of some of the best quotes from the encyclical (Spanish)
What Does Magnifica Humanitas Tell Catholics Today? By María José Atienza (Spanish)
By the way, Leo XIV has also approved the creation of a commission dedicated to studying the ethical challenges of AI.
The university is not merely a center of academic excellence, but a place where the search for truth becomes an expression of hope: «When the desire for truth becomes research, our boldness in study bears witness to the hope for a new world».
He also addressed mental health and academic pressure. The Pope spoke about the inquietude of youth, warning against the darker side of that restlessness when it is driven by extreme competitiveness: «Today, this is increasingly due to the pressure of expectations and the burden of performance. It is the pervasive lie of a distorted system, which reduces people to numbers, exacerbating competitiveness and leaving us caught in spirals of anxiety. It is precisely this spiritual malaise felt by many young people that reminds us that we are not the sum of what we have, nor a random collection of matter in a silent cosmos. We are a desire, not an algorithm!».
He also urged educators not to limit themselves to transmitting knowledge, but to speak to the heart and cultivate the conscience of their students. For the Pope, knowledge should help people “discern who they are,” not merely prepare them for the job market. He elevated the vocation of teaching to a higher spiritual and ethical dimension, comparing it to some of the most urgent works of mercy: «Teaching is a form of charity just as much as helping a migrant at sea, a poor person on the street, or a desperate soul».
Interesting point from The Washington Post: opposition to data centers is growing across the U.S. The infrastructure behind AI is starting to be seen less as unquestionable progress and more as something with real local political, environmental, and social costs.
According to this paper, the impact of data centers is already becoming visible through their thermal effects, and this other article points to growing economic tensions as well. Yes, they do create jobs but mostly temporary ones: somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 during construction, compared to only around 50–300 permanent positions once operational. The result is increasing friction in the regions where these facilities are built. The environmental and social costs are borne locally, while many of the economic and strategic benefits are captured globally. And that imbalance is beginning to generate resistance.
I’m also noticing a certain unease with Silicon Valley leaders (WSJ).
Joe Rogan recently interviewed Marc Andreessen. And what did Andreessen say while talking up the benefits of AI?: “Never gets drunk. Never gets sick. Never gets depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him. Never files HR complaints.”
I’m not sure that helps…
I tried Taskade this semester, but I realized I don’t want my tasks staring at me every time I open a new tab. I’ve now switched to Sapiare by José Luis Antúnez. It just shows beautiful things. That’s enough for me.
As I mentioned in this edition, AI is shifting the needle back toward what is “handmade.” In a world where almost anything can be produced with a few keystrokes, the imperfect and the artisanal become more valuable again.
Semafor reports growing skepticism around Boston Dynamics’ business model. Spectacular demos alone are no longer enough. The real question is whether the company can scale as a sustainable business.
Recently my university created a dedicated office for campus tours. At first I thought it was a bit excessive, but after reading this Wall Street Journal piece, it suddenly made a lot more sense. According to the research, the likelihood of applying changes depending on the weather during the visit: about 28% on hot days (so, Houston most of the year), 32% on mild days, and 25% on cold days. I just found that surprisingly interesting. Weather really influences the emotional first impression people form of a university.
Talking through your code with ChatGPT is basically the new rubber duck debugging.
I found Fernando de la Rosa’s reflection on the coexistence of “two internets” really thought-provoking. One internet is increasingly optimized for human attention, emotion, and engagement. The other is emerging as an internet for systems designed to process, classify, connect, and interpret information autonomously. They respond to fundamentally different needs.
I strongly agree with Lila Shroff and many of the people from my field quoted in this piece from The Atlantic:
If anything, the AI-ification of work seems likely to require more people who understand computer systems at a deep level.
Across the tech industry, demand for mid- and senior-career engineers is rising. The trouble, then, is how to adjust today’s computer-science programs to equip students for work when the field is changing so fast—especially when entry-level coding jobs that once were guaranteed are now far less certain.
Valerie Barr: You cannot make effective use of AI tools if you don’t know something about what you’re asking the tools to do.
Today’s AI boom is possible only because people pursued neural networks when they were uncool.
The split over whether to embrace coding tools points to a larger divide in the discipline: Is studying computer science about training students to be good software developers, or teaching them the computational theory that underpins the field.
Ed Cotton reflects in his newsletter on what the role of a strategist is:
Nobody buys “strategy.” They buy relief from a specific pressure they have not been able to name themselves. The CMO has content but no distinctiveness. The founder has grown, but no story. The agency has AI tools but no new operating rhythm. The brand has data but no meaning. The category has become a wall of sameness no one knows how to climb. Each of these is a real, payable problem. Generic strategy is none of them.
The decline in birth rates does not seem to have a single explanation. Derek Thompson explores this modern phenomenon in his newsletter through a conversation with Professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde.
Related to the demographic crisis discussion, I also highly recommend this recent address by the Pope on what is becoming one of the defining challenges for our societies.
Interesting point from the science segment of A vivir with Sampedro and Estupinyà. In the brain-computer interface space, Chinese companies are looking to compete with Neuralink in brain implants designed to help people with neurodegenerative diseases. These are small microelectrode chips that a neurosurgeon places in the cerebral cortex, where they can record and read neural activity. This can help patients with movement disorders control a computer cursor with their thoughts, for example, and it requires advanced AI, because the brain generates a lot of noise, and AI is what makes it possible to find patterns through training.
I really connected with this reflection from Elvira Lindo: throughout their lives, she and her husband have moved between very different places, but they have always tried to truly belong wherever they were: to adapt, integrate, and make a life there rather than live as tourists. She reflects on this especially in the context of moving between New York and Madrid.
Google announced its new AI-powered search box at the latest I/O:
Benedict Evan’s AI Eats the World presentation has been updated for May 2026.
Interesting take by Bárbara Castillo flipping the framing on critical thinking: instead of focusing on the content itself, she shifts attention to the AI systems producing it, and how that connects to AI literacy and understanding how these systems actually work under the hood. She proposes weaving it into everything, like a cross-cutting CS0.
A place that stores more than 1.3 million seed samples from around 6,300 plant species in case of natural disasters or other global catastrophes? The Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
I had already touched on this topic back in edition #38 after Marta G. Aller’s interview with Diego Garrocho. But Jordi Pérez Colomé has brought it up again here: typos as a kind of prestige signal to prove something wasn’t written by AI. Enrique Dans, quite sensibly, argues that he’s not going to start adding spelling mistakes just to prove he’s human. Fair enough.
I highly recommend this Club Dalroy episode with Tasio Pérez for anyone interested in reflecting more deeply on the fullness of marriage. I found the idea of dissociation especially thought-provoking.
Within the dynamism of married life, beginning from this intimacy, falling in love not only does not disappear, but becomes transfigured, resurfaces, and renews itself every day.
— Ana Martínez
Excellent read (Darragh Murray). AI hasn’t eliminated the work involved in building good dashboards; it has changed where the effort goes. Deep familiarity with the data, domain expertise, and thoughtful visualization practices matter even more now than before.
Really refreshing Reddit thread from a self-described “average” data scientist.
Fascinating conversation between Jared Henderson and Jennifer Frey on the challenges of keeping honors colleges alive within the structure of the U.S. higher education system. They discuss how Frey designed a rigorous, set-curriculum great-books honors program, along with broader questions about educational philosophy, liberal education, general education, and several current trends in higher education.
Jennifer Frey points out that most students in her honors college were actually STEM students, rather than humanities students, and that many of them ended up deeply enjoying and even requesting more classical literature and humanities courses. According to her, this interest helped revive demand for subjects that were nearly disappearing, such as Greek and Latin, and led many STEM students to pursue minors or certificates in philosophy, classical studies, or humane letters. She argues that the solution is not to turn universities into vocational schools. Rather than reducing education to job-related “skills,” she believes we should repair general education so that all students, including those in computer science, receive a liberal education that helps them become freer and more fully human.
Frey also recommends Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought as a modern defense and memoir-like reflection on the value of liberal learning.
I want you to have that experience of engaging with these texts because I do think it will make you a better human being.
This is an education that I believe will make you more free. It will liberate you. Let’s talk about that. And it’s very difficult. It’s very demanding. It will be completely transformative and it will help you be more fully human.
The core idea behind this article by Amanda Shendruk and Youjin Shin is that language is incredibly revealing, and that even seemingly trivial conversations with AI models may contain far more personal information than users realize they are disclosing. Just thinking about the potential implications for advertising is fascinating and a bit unsettling.
Claude Code is clearly having a moment right now. I honestly can’t stop seeing new videos, demos, workflows, and experiments around Anthropic’s coding agent almost every day.
📌 Research Corner
I really liked this interactive tool by Datadista for checking the water situation where you live. It gave me the idea of creating a student profile page in the instructor area of my platform, searchable by student name. I already have all the events stored in the database.
Possible research idea (not personally my area of interest): building tools to support fact-checkers in identifying AI-generated health misinformation on platforms like YouTube, particularly content aimed at older adults and presented by fabricated “experts” or fake medical professionals. A key challenge is that the deception is becoming increasingly difficult to detect, especially for more vulnerable groups.
Microsoft researchers demonstrate that when an AI agent is used to read and write documents, those documents become corrupted.
I spent some time reading Alex Scarlatos’ dissertation. Congrats on completing your PhD journey!
On Wednesday I attended my first focus group as a participant, and it was a really nice experience. It pushes you to think deeply about a specific topic, makes it easier to connect with the other participants, and in this case it also directly contributed to my working group research and paper.
🪁 Leisure Line
Went for a nice bike ride with my dad along Con da Hedra and Punta Moreiras (O Grove). It was a beautiful ride, and we stopped by this lovely lighthouse along the way.
On Sunday morning, I had breakfast by the sea with my parents, my brother, and his girlfriend at La Rivière Laterío. Later, we went for a walk along the Carril promenade, which I didn’t know was just minutes away from Vilagarcía de Arousa.
I think many of us would agree that the Canadian GP turned out to be a really strong race weekend: great battles throughout, especially Antonelli vs. Russell and Verstappen vs. Hamilton, the race itself was entertaining, and even the weather cooperated. My hope for the rest of the season is that we continue to see even more parity at the front and get to enjoy races like this or perhaps even better ones.
📖📺🍿 Currently Reading, Watching, Listening
This is what science and teaching as storytelling are all about.
Brazilian beer brand Brahma just dropped its World Cup ad featuring Ronaldo, and it’s next-level advertising. Easily one of the best ads we’ll see this World Cup.
One of my discoveries this week was Michael MacKelvie’s YouTube channel. I quickly got hooked. His videos usually begin with simple questions that any sports fan could ask, and from there he uses data and analysis to build surprisingly engaging stories. The mix of humor, narrative, and quantitative reasoning is really well done.
I was listening to this podcast about animation that Pedro Alpera hosts with JuanPe Arroyo from THE LINE Studio. JuanPe talks about his project Deaths of Peck, a game he’s been working on this past year. It’s about the adventure of turning an animated project into a video game.
What a finish at the Indy 500. So happy for Rosenqvist. A well-deserved win.
So good. The beauty of routine filled with meaning. Just 5 minutes long. In French with Spanish subtitles. Directed by Isabel Coixet.
Deportivo are back in La Liga. Really happy for them.
On the topic of La Liga… Why do websites crash when there’s La Liga on? Really well-told story by Lord Draugr.
Last Tuesday I watched the documentary on the life and work of musician Antonio Flores. The archival footage is incredibly powerful and adds enormously to the quality of the story being told. I also think the decision to move away from traditional interviews and replace them with more natural conversations works really well here.
🌐 Cool things from around the internet
A collection of links to stuff I think are worth sharing.
🔗 The Brazilian Amazon — beautiful brand design.
🔗 Everyone Wants a Piece — brilliant Lego campaign for the World Cup.
🔗 SubStudio — generate perfect subtitles with AI.
🔗 Cicatrizar el mapa — what a great idea this sound map of Lavapiés (Madrid). Created by Lou Romera. A walk through short audio clips to heal wounds. Beyond the stories themselves, I loved the execution of the website and the concept of the flor.llama.
🔗 The Figma design agent — Figma has put the agent right inside the canvas.
🔗 Red eléctrica de España — interactive 3D map of installed electrical generation capacity in Spain, overlaid on real terrain relief, with filters by technology, region, and power output.
🔗 How Diamonds are Made? — a fascinating read.
🔗 DiffsHub — built by The Pierre Computer Company. This is nice.
🔗 delphitools — a collection of small, low stakes and low effort tools.
🔗 PyTrendy — trend Detection in Python.
🔗 SiteRows — query a website with SQL.
🔗 taken — you opened this page. It already knows the following.
🔗 Bauhaus Clock for Mac — turn waiting into watching.
Issue #46 of Computing Education Things was written while listening to:
Coming back to Leo Rizzi. I hadn’t listened to him since Amapolas, and this time I felt his music sounded more human than ever. There’s something deeply philosophical about what he does, completely outside the mainstream. His new album, La belleza de las flores, just came out. I get the feeling he’s trying to carve out a space with a message that goes beyond the fleeting nature of social media. My favorite tracks so far: Gatos, Aquí nadie se puede morir, Velita, and Año nuclear.
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