Amjad Masad Profile picture
Dec 28, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I landed in the United States 10 years ago with nothing but credit card debt.

After one startup exit, one big tech job, and one unicorn, I genuinely believe that it wouldn't have been possible anywhere else in the world.

Here are 10 things I love about this country: Image
1. Work Ethic

First thing I noticed was that everyone regardless of occupation took pride in doing a bang-up job, even when no one looked.

I asked people: "why do you pour everything into a job even when it is seemingly thankless?" And it was like asking fish "what is water?"
2. Lack of corruption

In the 10 years in the US, I've never been asked for a bribe, and that's surprising.

When you know that you predictably get to keep a sizeable portion of the value you create and that no one will arbitrarily stop you, it makes it easier to be ambitious.
3. Win-win mindset

People don't try to screw you on deals, they play the long game, and align incentives in such a way that everyone wins.

This is especially apparent in Silicon Valley where you can't underestimate anyone because one day you might be working for them.
4. Rewarding talent

From sports to engineering, America is obsessed with properly rewarding talent. If you're good, you'll get recognized.

The market for talent is dynamic -- if you don't feel valued today, you can find a better place tomorrow.
5. Open to weirdos

Because you never know where the next tech, sports, or arts innovation will come from, America had to be open to weirdness. Weirdos thrive without being crushed.

We employ people with the most interesting backgrounds -- dropouts to artists -- they're awesome!
6. Forgiveness

Weird and innovative people have to put themselves out there, and as part of that, they're going to make mistakes in public. The culture here values authenticity, and if you're authentic and open about your failures, you'll get a second and a third chance.
7. Basic infrastructure

Americans take care of their public spaces. Parks are clean, subways and busses run on time, and utilities & services just work.

Because life can be livable for a time without income, it was possible for us to quit our jobs and bootstrap our business.
8. Optimism

When you step foot in the US there is a palpable sense of optimism. People believe that tomorrow will be better than today. They don't know where progress will come from, but that's why they're open to differences.

When we started up even unbelievers encouraged us.
9. Freedom

Clearly a cliche, but it's totally true. None of the above works if you're not free to explore & tinker, to build companies, and to move freely.

I still find it amazing that if I respect the law and others, I can do whatever I want without being compelled/restricted.
10. Access to capital

It's a lot harder to innovate & try to change the world without capital. If you have a good idea & track record, then someone will be willing to bet on you.

The respect for entrepreneurship in this country is inspiring. And it makes the whole thing tick.
Because of the character limit, I couldn't caveat the generalities that I made. It's hard to talk about an entire nation without making those. And my experience can be very different from yours. Also, we can do a lot better, and make sure everyone has equal access to opportunity.
Finally, many of the things that I talked about are under threat, largely from people who don't know how special they have it. America is worth protecting, and realizing that progress can be made without destroying the things that made it special.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Amjad Masad

Amjad Masad Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @amasad

Jan 24
Last weekend, I gave a talk at @agihouse_org for the "Generative UI" hackathon focusing on "just-in-time UI (JIT UI)."

I put together these slides super quickly, so the history will be incomplete, but it's worth starting at the top:

Early computing users had to learn how to use text-based terminals; everyone had to be a programmer and learn to write commands to manipulate files.

For computers to be mass consumer devices, they had to be easier to use. This came with the invention of GUI with the Xerox Alto. Steve Jobs copied it for the Mac, and Bill Gates scaled it to the masses with Windows. We've been living with this paradigm since.

As computers got more powerful and software more useful, UIs accumulated bloat. Screen real estate is fundamentally unscalable; every button, menu, and panel competes for space.

Synthesizing the two paradigms might solve their shortcomings: A command line system that generates UI just in time per task can be scalable and easy to use. This doesn't inherently require GenAI, and we find super early examples.

Mathematica innovated the "notebook" model, where commands can generate charts with some primary forms and controls.Image
Image
Image
Image
However, it wasn't until Google that JIT UI entered mainstream usage but stopped short of its full potential for this paradigm -- reimagining "apps" now seems possible but also feels at odds with the business model of the "10 blue links."

A closer fit to where the future is headed is Siri's inline UI. Although the feature was later removed, Siri integrated with Wolfram Alpha, from the same makers as Mathematica, an answer engine that works with natural language and can generate UIs and charts on the fly. It was super cool, and I remember spending hours running queries and doing random research about the world.

Siri could still show simple inline UI, like setting an alarm or editing a message before sending it out. Like Google, Apple also stopped short of the full potential of this paradigm.

This brings me to Replit -- in 2019, we embarked on a project to explore this paradigm.

CLUI, short for "command-line UI" is a type of JIT UI. We started from CLIs and added the following requirements:

- Should be usable with mouse and touch.
- Discoverable via context-aware autocomplete.
- The output should support rich and interactive media.

CLUI was initially used for internal tools. But since it has grown to power essentially every search and command box at Replit.Image
Image
Image
Image
So, coming to the present.

Generative AI created a renewed interest in text-based interfaces. For the first time in history, computers can truly "understand" natural language and respond to open-ended questions and poorly structured commands.
For many, this was a callback to the UNIX philosophy as best articulated by @tszzl in his famous "Text is the Universal Interface" blog post that came out just a few months before ChatGPT.

While tools like DALLE and Midjourney are entirely driven by text, many apps like RunwayML augmented traditional UIs with prompt-based generative AI.

But actually, looking a little closer, you can start to see that Midjourney is growing its own JIT UI for controls inside the chat window.
Some more recent examples of JIT UIs:
- @perplexity_ai copilot where the AI can generate forms on the fly to get more information from the user to tune the search.
- ChatGPT Code Interpreter and products like @JuliusAI_ that can show charts or, in some cases, entire UI.Image
Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 22, 2023
I've never seen so many entrepreneurs start businesses on Replit before.

Crazy part?

Many had ZERO coding experience.

Here is how they do it:
Start with a bounty. If you have some money to spare (as little as $50), Replit Bounties is a place to quickly get small software jobs done, such as MVPs. You get back the app running along with the source code so you can start iterating.

Case study: blog.replit.com/bounties-chris…
You can obviously make updates by posting more bounties. However, many at this point start working with our AI assistant Ghostwriter or ChatGPT to make updates. Here is Charlie on making a Chrome Extension with no coding experience
Read 7 tweets
Apr 19, 2023
StabilityAI just dropped a 3B and 7B open-source language models and say more to follow. Image
800B tokens training dataset is notable. LLaMA is 1T for 7B so hopefully it’s comparable quality.
CC is an interesting choice for weights license — it suggests you can use it commercially but you have to credit Stability Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 16, 2023
People constantly ask me “given how good AI is at coding is it still worth it to learn to code?”—

Are you crazy? The ROI on learning to code has 10x’d with AI.

Learn the basics and with some tenacity you can build your dream MVP.

Links to get started in thread:
100 days of code. By day 14-28 you should be able to do a lot especially with AI’s help. You can also speed run the whole thing in a month if you’re committed.

replit.com/learn/100-days…
Replit ships with a bunch of builtin AI tools including ChatGPT optimized for code and will help you learn and build.

replit.com/ai
Read 6 tweets
Mar 24, 2023
"Make me an app"—just talk to your @Replit app to make software
This p5.js example is particularly wild
The cool thing is that it gives you the source code to remix or ask for additional improvements. If the AI lets you down you can always get someone from Replit bounties to help you!
Read 5 tweets
Mar 18, 2023
Post favorite fed/jpow memes
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(