Paul Ford is a software developer and technology writer with thirty years of experience building and writing about software. He co-founded Postlight, a technology studio, and writes regularly for publications including the New York Times and Wired. His writing sits at the intersection of programming culture, product history, and what it actually feels like to build software over decades. Ford is known for long-form pieces that translate technical concepts for general audiences without losing the practitioner's view from inside the work.
Operating themes
- What the tools reveal about who builds Ford writes about what new programming tools expose about the people who use them, including AI coding tools and what the failures they enable say about judgment.
- Software as cultural artifact His work treats software products as reflections of organizational and social decisions, not just technical ones.
- The practitioner's perspective on AI hype Ford writes skeptically about AI capability claims but from inside the work, not from the sideline.
Cards in this library
- AI democratizing code production reveals the quality gap more clearly, not less: AI democratizing code production reveals the quality gap more clearly, not less.