Polymathic

Paul Welty
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Reflections on building software, AI, and staying human. Paul Welty shares insights from his work building tools for thinking. Author of "The Work of Being: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era" (available on Amazon).

Episodes

  1. 6H AGO

    Dev reflection - January 23, 2026

    Daily reflection synthesizing work across eight projects. What does it mean for a system to be ready? When infrastructure is complete but operations aren't, when automation works invisibly, and when configuration becomes code without type safety.

    10 min

  2. 2D AGO

    Dev Reflection - January 22, 2026

    Hey, it's Paul. January 22nd, 2026. Today was a launch day, which means it was also a "things broke immediately" day. Dialex went live at dialex.io, and the first thing that happened was every request got blocked with a 403 Forbidden error. I talk about reasonable decisions accumulating into unreasonable situations, why iteration speed matters more than initial tool choice, and how dashboards make accumulated state visible.

    8 min

  3. 5D AGO

    Busy is not a state

    We've built work cultures that reward activity, even when nothing actually changes. In technical systems, activity doesn't count—only state change does. This essay explores why "busy" has become the most misleading signal we have, and how focusing on state instead of motion makes work more honest, less draining, and actually productive.

    4 min

  4. 6D AGO

    Infrastructure shapes thought

    The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

    6 min

  5. JAN 16

    Build for the loop, not the lecture

    A junior developer used to wait days for mentor feedback. Now that loop closes in seconds. When feedback is scarce, you batch your questions. When feedback is abundant, learning becomes continuous. AI changes the supply side of learning—most of our systems weren't designed for this.

    1 min

  6. JAN 12

    When teaching stops being bounded

    AI removes the constraints that gave teaching its shape—one teacher, thirty students, limited time. But lifting constraints doesn't make the work easier. It makes it different. Teachers trained for a bounded classroom now face an unbounded role that requires judgment, discernment, and presence in ways we haven't yet mapped.

    4 min
  • 6 Episodes

About

Reflections on building software, AI, and staying human. Paul Welty shares insights from his work building tools for thinking. Author of "The Work of Being: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era" (available on Amazon).

Information

  • Creator
    Paul Welty
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Paul Welty
  • Show Website
    Polymathic