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Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels
I'm creating a simple developer utility to make managing Claude Code profiles (e.g. running it with DeepSeek, or some OpenRouter models) a little bit easier.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,747 posts.
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I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left
I was one of the very first advocates for AWS back when it was brand new - SQS, S3, EC2 SimpleDB - it was a lot smaller back then. In fact I...
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Mythical Man Month
a bliki entry for Mythical Man Month
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Going Full Time on Open Source
Why I left Figma to work full-time on open source, and how I plan to make the work sustainable.
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Appearing productive in the workplace
AI can produce work that looks expert without being expert. The failure arrives in two shapes, and both are reshaping the workplace.
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Write some software, give it away for free
This website which you're on right now is free (as in beer), free (as in freedom), open source software called Nonograph. It cost about $600 USD to release, mos...
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What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)
A week ago, I wrote about how Generative and Agentic AI may be amplifying what I’ve been calling cognitive debt: the accumulated gap between a system’s evolving structure and a team’s shared unders...
128
Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation
My fourth month of unemployment. I'm fresh off an interview with a senior technical role advertised with a decent compensation range whose upper end would let me make median rent, and whose lower range would not. At the end of an excellent interview, I am informed that said compensation
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It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
In an industry that pressures developers to always be shipping side-projects, it can be helpful to be retrospective with the projects that don't make the cut
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If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you
The 'AI replaces junior engineers' argument ignores basic economics. Junior employees aren't just cheap labor. They're salary insurance, pipeline protection, and the only hedge companies have against a senior workforce that increasingly doesn't need the job.
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Meetings are forcing functions
A recurring meeting serves as a powerful forcing function for long-running projects.
133
I have officially retired from Emacs
This past Tuesday I typed C-x C-c in Emacs for the last time after 20 years of daily use. Though nearly half that time was gradually retiring it, switching to modal editing, then to Vim. Emacs is a platform, and I’d grown accustomed to its applications, especially those I built myself. There was no particular hurry…
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Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
How do you know the output is good without redoing the work yourself? You've received a report, a market analysis for the new product you're planning to l...
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Do I belong in tech anymore?
On quitting, the spread of AI, and the loss of an ideal.
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Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
I’ll be attending Babashka Conf on May 8 and Dutch Clojure Days on May 9. If you’re attending either (or just visiting Amsterdam), drop me a line!
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Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)
Everything your mentor wants to say but HR won't let them
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I don't want your PRs anymore
Notes by `dpc`
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Work with the garage door up (2024)
One of my favorite ways that creative people communicate is by “working with their garage door up,” to riff on a passage from Robin Sloan (below). This is the opposite of the Twitter account which mostly posts announcements of finished work: it’s Screenshot Saturday ; it’s giving a lecture about the problems you’re…
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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing
Tim Cook had an extraordinary run — and impeccable timing, both in terms of when he became CEO, and when he is stepping down.
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Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people
I spend a lot of time negotiating this in the software world: And if you're wondering why this happens, it's normally because: 1. people aren't talking to people 2. people aren't listening So lots of designers and product people have leapt onto 1, basically trying to
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When moving fast, talking is the first thing to break
When you make speed and “moving fast” the biggest priority on a project or in an organization, the first thing to breakdown is talking to each other. Talking takes time. Consensus is expensive and slow. In a pressurized environment there’s no time to schedule calls, get input from subject matter experts, or resolve…
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Saying goodbye to Agile
Software's
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The economics of software teams: Why most engineering orgs are flying blind
A breakdown of what software development teams actually cost, what they need to generate to be financially viable, and why most organizations have no visibility into either number.
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The peril of laziness lost
In his classic Programming Perl — affectionately known to a generation of technologists as "the Camel Book" — Larry Wall famously wrote of the three virtues of a programmer as laziness, impatience, and hubris:
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20 years on AWS and never not my job
While I created my AWS account because I was interested in Amazon S3, that was not in fact immediately available to me: In the early days of AWS, you had to specifically ask for each new service to be enabled for your account. My new AWS account did come with two services enabled by default, though — Amazon Simple…
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Layoff Thinking
Were you recently laid off? I have some, hopefully, helpful thoughts to survive the maelstrom of self-doubt and pain that's swirling around inside your head.
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Shooting down ideas is not a skill
Criticism can prevent mistakes. It can never create value. Only ideas can do that. The two are not equal contributions, and most meetings get this backwards.
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Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)
Discover insightful advice for young people, emphasizing choices, confidence, and personal growth through lived experiences.
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I quit. The clankers won
The one where I pack up my bags.