Posts in "tech"

Shocker! Reversal in AI ROI slide-wisdom: AI does works well

There’s a new study out that means it’s time to update all those slides that say AI projects are failing: [A] new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School complicates the narrative. The study found that 74% of businesses that measure the ROI from their generative AI efforts are already seeing a positive return, and more expect to see a positive ROI within the next two or three years.

What do we think of GitHub saying there are 180m developers in the world?

180 million-plus developers now work and build on GitHub. Their definition is “[a]nyone with a GitHub account.” Let’s not overthink it, just yet, and instead go with what they’re saying. If 2025 had a theme, it would be growth. Every second, more than one new developer on average joined GitHub–over 36 million in the past year. It’s our fastest absolute growth rate yet and 180 million-plus developers now work and build on GitHub.

How many apps are written in Java? How many apps use the Spring Framework and Spring Boot?

I’m always trying to find how many apps are written (and, of course, running) in Java. Here are recent numbers I have on hand: “[N]early 70% of respondents say that more than half of their applications are built with Java or run on a JVM.” Azul survey, 2025. “98% of companies we surveyed use Java, with 57% saying it is the backbone of most of their application and infrastructure estate.

When should a Claude Skill use code versus just a SKILL.md?

Here are some thoughts after a week of using Claude Skills. JasonJ in the SDT Slack says: I’d tl;dr Claude CLI skills as “low/no/english code MCPs'”. Seems helpful in the way that local utility scripts are today. That is a good way of putting it. I haven’t done heavy experimenting, but I think there’s a distinction between: (1) The Skill has no code, except maybe code fragments. Most of it is just a SKILL.