# Jacob Young

> Software engineer and founder of Sancho Studio in New York. I help companies make better technical decisions, faster — through technical due diligence, AI engineering, and systems work.

## About
- [Homepage](https://jry.io/): Bio, current work at Sancho Studio, and how to get in touch.
- [Bagel offer](https://jry.io/bagel/): If you're in New York and working on something cool, I'll buy you a bagel.

## Writing
- [Goodbye Flow State](https://jry.io/writing/goodbye-flow-state/): On losing flow to coding agents — how the short loop of a language model bulldozes the slow circuit where the mind does the creating, and writing code by hand again to keep those muscles from softening.
- [Making a deterministic MacBook](https://jry.io/writing/stop-worrying-love-nix/): Folding a decade of dotfiles and ad-hoc macOS settings into a single declarative Nix machine definition that rebuilds a fresh MacBook to the same state in under 30 minutes.
- [Use boring languages with LLMs](https://jry.io/writing/use-boring-languages-with-llms/): Why coding agents perform better in cohesive ecosystems like Go than fragmented ones like JavaScript or Python
- [Is all software converging](https://jry.io/writing/is-all-software-converging/): An argument that the agentic chat-box is becoming a Universal Interface — the way mass-produced clothing replaced bespoke tailoring — and what that costs us.
- [You Are Not Your Job](https://jry.io/writing/you-are-not-your-job/): On automation, identity, and why warmth and presence — not technical skill — are the parts of a person that can never be replaced by a model.
- [Reflecting on the last decade](https://jry.io/writing/reflecting-on-the-last-decade/): Reflections on turning thirty: seeking discomfort, living generously, traveling to be humbled, and the inner work that compounds over a decade.
- [Recurse 2 - Connections, Challenges, Creative Coding](https://jry.io/writing/rc-week-two/): Second-week roundup at the Recurse Center: Creative Coding under time pressure, the Rust book club, and a Cryptopals dive into chi-squared frequency analysis.
- [Recurse 1 - Dealing with Burnout, Thru-Hiking, and Back Again](https://jry.io/writing/rc-week-one/): First-week reflections from the Recurse Center: working through burnout after years of remote work, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and rebuilding a love of programming.
- [Keep a Low Profile](https://jry.io/writing/keep-a-low-profile/): A short note on internet literacy and the deliberate choice to share less online — keeping a low profile as a foundational digital skill.

## Garden
- [Digital Garden](https://jry.io/garden/): A digital garden of inter-linked notes on cryptography, weightlifting, photography, and other topics in active study.