Apps That Work The Way You Think

Personal software lets you build for the way your brain actually works-not the way someone else thinks it should.

In this week’s episode of the Conjuring Code podcast, my guest Mark Wochner made an interesting point that’s worth repeating.

We talk a lot about “personal software” these days, which is made possible by AI assistance. Building your own software is certainly not a panacea—as it turns out, lots of software is more complex and subtle than you think—but one real virtue is that it lets you engage with the world in the way YOUR brain works.

In Mark’s case, this was specifically around weather data. There are plenty of weather apps out there, but for one thing, they only show you weather in the future, and Mark wanted to be able to see weather in the past (which is why his app is called Historicast).

But what I found even more interesting is that this app shows you four different forecasts, rather than just one. (They come from the four different major weather models around the world.) Where perhaps your typical bloke might just want an average across these four, Mark actually wanted to know when they disagree, because as a scientist, his brain is trained to engage with that kind of statistical uncertainty, seeing things as probabilities across multiple models rather than a single guess.

My point isn’t that that’s a “better” way of looking at the world (though I think it probably is). My point is, that’s what he wanted. And building his own software let him have it.

There are lots more insights in this week’s episode, give it a listen!