Dan Petrolito: I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric.
...ric. An extremely trivial script at the right moment can have a massive impact. Situated software catalyzes cozy potential.
Topic: situated software
12 chunks · 9 episodes
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- situated software appears in 12 chunks across 9 episodes, from 2024-01-16 to 2025-07-07.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 3/4/24 (2024-03-04), with 2 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with massive amount, possibility space, and black box, while by chunk count it sits between printing press and toxic spiral; its yearly rank moved from #41 in 2024 to #211 in 2025.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Shipped software has to be bug free for everyone's use case.
Shipped software has to be bug free for everyone's use case. Situated software just has to be bug free for that user's particular use. Many orders of magnitude lower bar of generalizability, and thus of cost to create. If only m...
What is in this whole universe of previously non-viable software?
...e not viable are in the long, thick tail of software. This tail of software is "situated software": hyper bespoke and niche. Let's imagine, for sake of argument, that the universe of imaginable situated software is orders of magnitude larger in te...
Engineers can make their own situated software tools to improve their workflows.
Engineers can make their own situated software tools to improve their workflows. But for example writers can't do that. The low hanging fruit of "personal tools" is huge.
Situated software must individually be small use cases.
Situated software must individually be small use cases. Because if the use case were viable as an app it would be an app. Apps are large. But it's a mistake to see tha...
I was imagining bespoke situated software for planning my five-year old's birthday party.
I was imagining bespoke situated software for planning my five-year old's birthday party. Someone countered that that was a niche use case. But it's not a niche use case! Every parent in the ...
With situated software, you're in a direct relationship with the software.
With situated software, you're in a direct relationship with the software. It's not some black box built by someone else. It's software that you've evolved and grown yourse...
Building software is crushingly expensive, so it only makes sense to build polished software at scale today.
... because it is not viable. Vertical Saas is our modern poor man's equivalent of situated software for businesses. It's one-size-fits-all, but for a smaller niche.
No one will use another person's hyper-bespoke situated software.
No one will use another person's hyper-bespoke situated software. For example, everyone loves their own complex spreadsheet but hates everyone else's. But people will reuse other's building blocks. If you're search...
The holy grail of assistive apps has long been a collaborative trip planning app.
...d be assembled into a just-in-time bespoke workflow. A swarm of self-assembling situated software.
Building on the riffs on situated software from last week.
Building on the riffs on situated software from last week. Most software has to assume a generic context--wide applicability to many different users and use cases. Situated software assumes a ...
Situated software is software a user makes for themselves to solve their particular problem.
Situated software is software a user makes for themselves to solve their particular problem. Situated software is often a hack, jury-rigged, duct-taped together. To an...