How I Learned 3D Graphics in a Basement in Ottawa
How I went from Apple IIe two-liners to C, x86 assembly, the demo scene, 3D engine prototypes, and a high school internship building technology for Wizardry 8.
Ben Houston • June 16, 2025
This is the personal blog of Ben Houston (bio here), a 3D computer graphics software developer. I've worked on projects like Web3DSurvey, Three.js, Deadline, Krakaota, and Exocortex VFX plugins. I'm also an entrepreneur, having founded Land of Assets, Threekit, Clara.io, Exocortex, and Frantic Films Software.
Latest writing, page 3
Three Hard-Won Lessons for Entrepreneurs
After twenty years building computer graphics software used in Hollywood blockbusters and enterprise product visualization, here are the crucial lessons that can help entrepreneurs build more successful companies.
Ben Houston • May 22, 2025
Inline Intent
Declary introduces a new capability for embedding intent specifications directly in your source code—transforming pseudocode into working implementations. This intuitive approach bridges the gap between what you want and how it's implemented, all within your existing files.
Ben Houston • May 7, 2025
Intent-Driven Testing
Intent-driven testing shifts validation from implementation details to declared intent, ensuring your system works as specified rather th an just as coded. This approach generates comprehensive test suites from your intent files, introducing the powerful concept of specification coverage.
Ben Houston • May 7, 2025
From Agents to Intent
AI coding agents are great at greenfield tasks -- but struggle to maintain or modify existing systems. The problem isn’t the model. It’s the paradigm. This essay makes the case for intent-based programming: a shift from task-driven implementation to declarative specification, powered by systems like Declary.
Ben Houston • May 5, 2025
The Intent Toolkit
Intent-based programming doesn’t have to be a disruptive shift. By treating it as a toolkit -- rather than a framework -- you can incrementally adopt declarative development practices without rewriting your architecture.
Ben Houston • May 5, 2025
Generic Builder
The Generic Builder is a configurable meta‑builder that creates specialized builders on demand, solving the chicken‑and‑egg problem of intent‑based toolkits. This essay explains its design, the router agent, and a chat‑driven workflow that bridges conversational intent with structured files.
Ben Houston • May 5, 2025
Glossary of Intent-Based Development
Intent-based development shifts the focus of software engineering from manual implementation to structured intent. This vocabulary defines the core building blocks of Declary, a toolkit for generating and maintaining software systems through declarative specifications.
Ben Houston • May 2, 2025
Learning from Simonyi
Charles Simonyi's Intentional Programming was a prescient attempt to shift software from languages to abstractions. In the age of AI and intent-based toolkits, many of his core insights are newly relevant. This essay explores the parallels and differences between Simonyi's vision and today's declarative, AI-driven development models.
Ben Houston • May 1, 2025
Sufficient Specifications
Traditional specifications failed because they required exhaustive detail. With LLMs, we can now embrace "Sufficient Specification" - providing just enough intent to guide generation without drowning in details. Learn how iterative specification specificity and generator patterns make intent-based programming practical for the first time.
Ben Houston • May 1, 2025
Recursive Intent
Recursive generation allows intent-based programming toolkits to ingest their own outputs and build entire applications from minimal specifications. This essay explores how recursive intent turns code generation into a compiler-like pipeline that scales small prompts into structured systems.
Ben Houston • May 1, 2025
Refactors as Specification Shifts
In traditional development, refactoring is a costly, manual effort to improve code structure without changing behavior. But in intent-based programming, refactors are reframed: they emerge naturally from specification shifts and cost little more than regeneration. This essay explores how we can reconceptualize refactoring in a world where code is ephemeral and intent is the source of truth.
Ben Houston • April 28, 2025
