Recent links

Working with AI is less predictable than traditional software. That makes leadership skills such as context, clarity, and feedback more valuable.

The manifestation of my imposter syndrome, for me and today, is what does it mean to be a software engineer. There's a lot more noise than signal on the...

Solid core + capability-based sandboxes + LLMs = Users with superpowers

If someone asks you something, send your answer. Not the AI's.

The argument says AI erased the junior engineer's marginal value. An intern who shipped a feature that had been waiting for years suggests otherwise.

My book has a linter, ~5,500 automated checks, and a Pandoc pipeline that rebuilds five formats (EPUB, Kindle, paperback ×2, and web) on every git push. For a...

How listening broadly turns everyday problems into useful project ideas.

Successful contributions to open source projects are a kind of currency. GitHub in particular encourages this in a number of ways: by showing avatars of...

A weekly ritual for software teams to unplug from AI coding assistants, prevent skill atrophy, and rediscover the joy of craftsmanship.

When Claude drives you off the cliff

Agents can write code faster than we can absorb it. Here's why it still matters for humans to understand what they build — and some techniques for doing that...

How I set up my 2026 MacBook Pro, along with the software I installed and the method I used for each (Mac App Store, Homebrew, or direct download).

I gave a talk on neurodiversity at Decoupled Days 2026. This is the companion article that I wrote for it. If you’re just looking for the slides, click here.

The one where I back to good software.

A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of...

On what is left to do once the machine can make anything, and why taste is the last craft worth keeping.

On AI and an all-encompassing role in modern web development.

Yes, the underlying model must have three states, but one is always irrelevant to the actual user goal. Users do not seek out solutions to problems they don’t...

The software development profession is in the midst of upheaval. Nobody knows how the AI revolution will play out in the end, but it is c...