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Software engineering lessons from production, raw and honest from the heart — almost 20 years of them. Jump to a year in the sidebar, or browse categories and curated collections.
8 articles from May 2025 · show all
Software architecture IS Conway's Law
Can you even have architecture before there's a team?
You're a business
Quick thought from a conversation with friends
Common abstraction traps
Here's a few common abstraction traps that suck you in, look like they improve your code, then turn into bad ideas as your system grows.
DRY – a common source of bad abstractions
The worst and hardest to maintain code that I've seen or written has been in pursuit of DRY
Why websites and webapps are different
The website vs webapp debate is at least as old as my career. And it keeps coming up. One camp says "React is too complex you don't need any of that", the other camp goes "I don't understand how you live like this". Both are right.
Stateless decision making
Do you ever feel like your brain is full and there's so much going on you can barely keep up? Me too.
Your interview is a sales call
I've been doing hiring manager screens lately. Here's a few tips.
How do you find time for cleanup work
A reader asks how do you find time for technical cleanup work. If OKRs and bugs take priority, when will you make improvements?