121
Flunking my Anthropic interview again
I didn't misclick any buttons. My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 311 posts.
122
How do I get into the game industry
Every now and then someone tells me that their child loves video games and wants to get into the game industry, then asks me how...
123
AI coding made me faster, but I can't code to music anymore
AI coding has made me much more productive—but at a strange cost. I can't listen to music when I code anymore.
124
Dangerous advice for software engineers
I’m a big fan of “sharp tools”. These are tools that are powerful enough to be hugely helpful or harmful, depending on how they’re used. Most forms of direct…
125
Omarchy Is Out
My latest love letter to Linux has been published. It's called Omarchy, and it's an opinionated setup of the Arch Linux distribution and the Hyprland tiling window manager. With everything configured out-of-the-box to give you exactly the same setup that I now run every day. My Platonic ideal of what a developer…
126
The cost of interrupted work (2023)
You’ve likely read lots of blog posts stating that it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to work after an interruption, context switch, or meeting. Thus, “do you have five minutes” ends up not only costing those few minutes, but instead about half an hour. But where does that number come from?
127
Developer's block
A blog on software development and other stuff
128
All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen Let me tell you something that will happen after you become a manager: you’re going to mess u…
129
How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method
you need to sit for this one for 48h
130
Code review can be better
Slightly unusual genre today: a negative result about our git-review tool for a different take on code review process, which we decided to shelve, at least for the time being.
131
OPA maintainers and Styra employees hired by Apple
Banner announcing OPA creators joining Apple
132
The Enterprise Experience
Reflections on working in a large enterprise — culture, process, and what I've learned in a year.
133
Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity
I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post
134
Traps to Developers
HTML and CSS
135
The Timmy Trap
This is Part 2 of my LLM series. In Part 1 , I discussed how in just a few short years, we went from the childlike joy of creating “Pirate Poetry” to the despair that our jobs would disappear. My main message was to relax a bit, as companies abuse the hype cycle to distort what is actually happening.
136
A case study in bad hiring practice and how to fix it
In this day and age of cybersecurity professionals crying out for roles, we're still seeing companies complain that there is a skills shortage and a lack of talent. A quick scan through your LinkedIn feed will show this is absolute nonsense: there is a mass of experienced, capable talent out there l
137
An engineer's perspective on hiring
hiring in tech is broken and everyone knows it. what can we do better?
138
AI must RTFM: Why tech writers are becoming context curators
I’ve been noticing a trend among developers that use AI: they are increasingly writing and structuring docs in context …
139
Let's stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
140
Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
Curing Your AI 10x Engineer Imposter Syndrome
141
Writing a good design document
A guide
142
If you're remote, ramble
A lightweight way to add ambient social cohesion for remote teams.
143
I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself
After joining Mintlify (which acquired my previous company), I finally fixed a search bug that had bothered me for over a year as a user - the debounced search queries weren't being aborted, causing race conditions and poaor search quality. By adding an AbortController to ensure only the most recent search query…
144
Live coding interviews measure stress, not coding skills
Live coding measure stress, not coding skills
145
AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser
A reshaped learning curve
146
So you're a manager now
Advice for first-time managers from someone who learned it the hard way, cleaned it up, and passed it on.
147
What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?
I like bits, bits are mighty. With bits you can do impressive things!
148
How to increase your surface area for luck
You should just do things
149
The vibe coder's career path is doomed
Let me get one thing out of the way immediately: LLMs are helpful. This isn't about whether LLMs can write code. They can. It's about why vibe coding might be the worst career investment you'll make.
150
Checklists are hard, but still a good thing
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…