Blog.
Notes on software, design, and things learned along the way.
Browse by topic 34
Unlearn faster
When I started engineering seriously, I carried a lot of "correct" patterns in my head.
The real unfair advantage is focus
"unfair" advantages are often associated with things that are external. Better network, funding, timing. But in practice, the biggest one I've seen is focus.
Vibe-engineering an OpenAPI compatible API authoring tool
As an engineering lead, I spent most of my time architecting systems, writing issues, and translating business requirements into clean technical requirements which…
You aren't qualified until you've lived the role
We overestimate preparation.
Race conditions in async code
What do you think is wrong with this particular block of code?
Your website has a carbon footprint too.
Every page load burns electricity — servers, networks, your user's device. That electricity usually comes from fossil fuels. An average webpage generates ~0.5g of CO2…
Version control your motivation
Look, I’m not going to pretend like I’ve cracked the code to productivity or motivation. I’ve abandoned more projects than I’ve finished - ideas that started with…
Reducing blast radius when designing APIs
I’ve been designing APIs for almost a decade now and one of the things that I frequently see developers get wrong is with designing APIs that are stiff and tightly…
Your users aren't IP addresses.
Let’s get this out of the way first:
Auth is a product, not a feature.
“Just generate a token and check it later, right?”
Don't be a ticket engineer.
Imagine one day, you’re scrolling through your Jira tickets, and the latest ones are marked as resolved by AI. Why wouldn’t it be? If it had access to the code,…
Accessibility is UX.
I’ve worked with many developers over the course of several years and there’s a recurring misconception I keep noticing: most people still think accessibility is only…
It thinks, therefore?
If a system behaves indistinguishably from a conscious being, should we call it conscious?