The 387th time I saw the Golden Gate Bridge

Hey Reader, I took a quick trip to San Francisco for Stripe’s conference. It was just one night. All I really needed was a bed, a shower, and electricity for all my devices. I booked a hotel at Lombard and Van Ness, surrounded by the characteristic hills that make The City feel like nowhere else. When I got to my room, I found more USB charging spots than regular outlets. I was taking stock of this small victory when I looked out the window and found an unexpected bonus. The Golden Gate Bridge, in the distance. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it. Hundreds, easily. I grew up about fifty miles north. That bridge meant we were heading to the zoo, catching a flight, or sightseeing with out-of-town guests. Driving toward it meant we were almost somewhere. Even though I live in a city with a dozen bridges, the Golden Gate remains my favorite. But after you’ve seen something hundreds of times, you get a bit desensitized. There was a familiar comfort looking at it from my hotel room — and not much else. That was the 388th time I’d seen it, give or take. The 387th time hit different. We were on one of our regular drives down to visit family in California. One of the days, bouncing between relatives’ houses, I realized something: we were only fifteen miles from the Golden Gate. And my kids had never seen it. Their father’s supposed favorite bridge in the world, and they’d never seen it. With everybody’s buy-in, I skipped the Novato turnoff and kept going south. There’s a tunnel in Marin. It’s now named for Robin Williams. I’ve driven through it hundreds of times, too. As we approached, I announced to the car: “Tunnel!” The kids knew exactly what to do. It’s something my mom taught me, and I passed on to them: hold your breath through the tunnel, then make a wish on the other side. They’ve done it on road trips more times than I can count. But never in this tunnel. They didn’t know that this was the tunnel that started the whole tradition. What was waiting on the other side was the biggest surprise of all. On a clear day — and we had one — you come out of the Robin Williams Tunnel and the Golden Gate Bridge towers into view. There’s no buildup. It just appears. I watched them see it for the first time. I’ve driven across that bridge more times than I can remember. I know the color. I know the scale of the cables. I thought I knew everything about it. But that time, I noticed things I’d stopped seeing. The red seemed brighter than I’d ever remembered. Every cable felt worth examining. I was zoomed in on the details of a bridge I thought I knew completely. That crossing was different from all the others, because I saw it through my children’s eyes. This is the kind of clarity that could change the game for you and your team, too. You’ve looked at your own product hundreds of times. You know how it works, what it does, the features that make it good. That familiarity is valuable — and it’s also exactly what makes it hard to see what a developer notices when they check out your tool. EveryDeveloper has worked with more developer products than anyone. That helps us see your product the way a developer sees it — fresh eyes, first impressions, the details you’ve stopped noticing. You want developers to find you, decide you’re worth checking out, and then get started successfully. That begins with knowing what they’re looking for and how they interpret what you’ve got. You want to know what they see. We can help you get there. Now is a good time to have a short conversation. No pressure, just a chance to see how we can bring some clarity. Adam — How does AI rank dev tools? LLM Rank.fyi