Letters by Burk #156: The Creator Middle Class, My Dev Tools, and BYD
Where the creator middle class is heading, plus the dev tools I use and a battery giant.
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Hi friends,
a mix this time. One heavier piece on the creator economy up top, then three from my tech corner: a terminal, my AI coding tools, and BYD.
Here's my week.
The Death of the Creator Middle Class
The top gets paid more than ever. The middle does great work and can't survive on it. It's starting to look a lot like income inequality.
Read it on Medium or on Substack.
Antigravity vs Claude Code vs Codex
I run all three every day. I dropped Antigravity once, then version two pulled me back in. Codex ended up as my reviewer, Claude Code still does most of the building.
Read it on Medium or on Substack.
The Best Terminal for Mac in 2026
Everyone asks which terminal to install on a Mac. I tried the ones people keep recommending. Only one stuck.
Read it on Medium or on Substack.
BYD Is the Apple of Car Making
BYD builds the cars, the batteries, the chips, even the ships that carry them. That's the Apple playbook on wheels, and it should worry a few people in Wolfsburg.
Read it on Medium or on Substack.
💡 Fun Facts
BYD didn't mean anything at first. "Build Your Dreams" is a backronym the company added in 2008 for a US auto show. Until then, BYD was just the pinyin for Biyadi.
The "Apple of car making" began as a battery maker. BYD built rechargeable batteries starting in 1995 and didn't make a car until 2003.
zsh became the Mac default in 2019 because of software licensing. Apple stayed on an old version of bash to steer clear of GPLv3, so it switched to zsh.
That's #156. Back soon. ✌️
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