This week at Try Hard Studios - February 27, 2026

We're back!

We're so back. It was so over, but we are so back.

That's how it feels every day around here. You'll have to forgive me for not sending an email for a few weeks. It's been a bit of a wild ride.

A couple of weeks ago, I launched a desktop application called Solo. The original intention for Solo was to be a marketing effort for faster.dev, which spoiler alert, I've also launched! But a little bit quietly.

I put Solo out, and people really, really liked it, and the vision immediately expanded. I launched it as a sort of dev stack process manager, and people wanted to use it as their full integrated development environment. They wanted to run agents and terminals and their dev stack all within Solo.

I thought that that was a much better idea, and so I scrambled and worked like mad to broaden the scope of the actual application. Now, I tell you what it took, but I cannot recommend you going down the same path.

I ended up working basically around the clock for two or three weeks. Many nights I worked so late in the office that I ended up sleeping on the couch here, waking up early, working some more, and going home to wake the kids and take them to school.

Fortunately, I did still get to see the kids. I went home and put them to bed, came back to work, and then took them to school the next day. Beyond that, on the weekdays, I was basically working all the time. On the weekends, when the kids went down for a nap, I came back to the office and worked some more and then went back home to play once they were awake again.

So it may sound like I'm trying to have it all. That's because I'm trying to have it all! I know that this is not sustainable long term, and I don't want to do this long term to be honest with you. But I do feel like this is both a moment in the broader industry of things changing and there being opportunity, and a moment for me specifically having a little bit of a hot lead on something that people like. So I decided to make a conscious decision to work too much in a focused sprint.

The new desktop app is in the hands of beta users and it is much, much better! I will probably cut a wider general availability release, maybe even today or maybe tomorrow or Monday.

Faster.dev has launched. I've already squashed a lot of UI bugs and recorded even more videos that are currently being uploaded. So I have two big projects behind me. And something I've been reflecting on is that progress, even huge amounts of progress, doesn't feel as good or as tangible if the thing is not yet released.

Now that Solo and Faster are both released, I can make changes and push them and users get the benefit! And that feels so much better! I was making huge progress before it was released which feels good, but it doesn't hit quite as hard because it almost feels like it just building up pressure waiting for the thing to finally get out there.

I feel this great sense of relief having now shipped the projects. I also feel like I'm kind of coming down off of a chaotic adrenaline rush.

I mean those two or three weeks were really, really bad. But also they were slightly fun? It's nice to work frenetically when you feel like you're working towards something that is working.

Now that the lion is no longer chasing me I do feel a little bit of a crash in my energy. I'm trying to recover my sleep debt… and I'm not quite there yet! But I'm headed in the right direction.

If you haven been following the journey on the Mostly Technical podcast I would encourage you to check out at least the last few weeks episodes because we do a pretty real-time accounting of what's been going on over there.

Next week, I'm headed to Europe for Laracon EU.

My podcast co-host Ian and I are hosting a party the night before the conference starts and I am thrilled to death about it. I'm excited to see a lot of friends, but I'm also really excited that I don't have any responsibilities beyond showing up to this party. Usually I'm speaking or emceeing the conference and while I really enjoy that, it's just a big duty that I want to discharge faithfully.

This year I hardly have any duties! I think it's going to be much more relaxing than any conference that I've recently been to.

That's been my journey over the past couple of weeks! I'm still digging out of emails so please forgive me if I've sat on yours for a while. Fortunately, I have the best operations person in the world, Kelsey, and she often will Slack me emails like I'm some sort of law firm partner who can't understand how to work email. She'll Slack me a screenshot and then I'll reply in Slack. Not something I'm super proud of, but I have to admit, it's kind of awesome to just have my head in the code all day and know that somebody is managing the important stuff. As always, super grateful for her. But I will dig out of all of these emails! Please forgive me for being a bad friend.

Alright, let's look at some tweets.

Things I found this week

Just a heads up that each Twitter/X screenshot has a link to the original post if you want to go follow the account.

Absolutely striking picture. I love the black and white treatment. I don't remember where I first heard it or who said it, but I remember somebody saying, "Growing old is not for the faint of heart." That always stuck with me, and that is what this picture reminds me of.

Here's a super nice baluster treatment. Not only the angles that she calls out, but the actual materials: the walnut, the oak, and the white, and the blue baseboards. I wish I had the ability to make stuff in the real world that looks this good. Step one is recognizing it I guess!

We've talked about this forever! Operate in the world as it exists, not as you wish it to exist! It has a proper name. When I finally write my book, I will be able to name the thing as it should be named. The is-ought problem.

Here's your weekly dose of devastating poetry.

I had a tweet about a common social grace of inviting someone to finish their story after being interrupted.

I had that tweet go viral, and this was one of the great replies I got to it.

Just a full article about the importance of being polite and little polite things you can do!

I don't know what they're teaching the Iranian bricklayers, but we've got to figure it out. It should be a matter of national priority to figure out how we can make things as beautiful as the Iranians do.

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That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know.

Talk soon,
Aaron

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