Articles
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.
7 articles from August 2022 · show all
Reader Question: What do collaborative teams look like?
New members on our team invariably say 2 things: 1. Wow I've never seen a team move this fast 2. This approach feels weird. I'm uncomfortable Teams like this are not common.
What makes a real image?
What does a real image look like? The rise of modern AI photo editing and generation tools makes this an interesting question.
Your code doesn't matter
"Your code doesn't matter" is something experienced programmers say, between the lines, when they sound like complete lunatics. But what do they mean? Why does everyone say it?
What coding tutorials and teachers get wrong
Chatting about teaching and learning complex technical skills with an engineer I'm mentoring. She's a former chef. We shared the same frustration with online resources.
I stopped using Google Analytics after 15 years
swizec.com has been around since 2005. For 15 of those years, it's been running Google Analytics to give me a sense of "Is anyone out there?". No more.
Reader question: So about that perfect burndown chart ...
If your approach works so well, why isn't every team doing this?
Move your business logic into data
The quickest way to simplify a complex function with lots of logic is to turn it into data. A lesson from production