Papers & Books
Blogs and hot takes are fun but the good stuff hides in primary sources. I like to read computer science papers and books cover to cover and write about what holds up in production and what doesn't.
You get the insights without wading through 40 pages of LaTeX. And when a famous book doesn't survive contact with real code, I'll tell you that too.
Latest papers and books
April 2026
Just Read the Paper
Read more papers. You can learn the latest and greatest in your field in one chill afternoon.
June 2025
3 sticky insights from 3 eng management books
Ever feel like your brain is blended and you can't even keep up with the things you're learning? Me too. But the good shit stays.
February 2025
What I learned from Inspired
Products not projects. Outcomes not features. Iterate.
January 2025
What I learned from Accelerate
Accelerate is the empirical research behind books such as The Phoenix/Unicorn Project and (parts of) Software Engineering at Google. I loved it.
The score takes care of itself
Less talking more doing
December 2024
Your next mountain, pt2
3+1 quick book recommendations to help you think about next year
September 2024
The Laws of Software Evolution
Manny Lehman was one of the first to notice that software is never done. It just continues to evolve forever.
Why software projects fail
5 common themes
July 2024
Why SQL is Forever
Never underestimate the power of good marketing for bad products. NoSQL was fun but SQL is here to stay.
June 2024
6 books engineers should read
Here are 6 books I'd buy every engineer who joins my team, if I ran a team. You might like 'em too.
April 2024
43 years of the actor model
The actor model is now part of everyday tooling and ensures concurrency safety. Understanding the principles behind it helps you write less buggy code.
The best engineering books get good 5 years into your career
The best engineering books aren't those you read at the start of your career. It's the ones you appreciate 5 years in.
February 2024
Onboarding to a new team
People are starting to cheat in interviews using ChatGPT. It's obvious, doesn't work, and wouldn't even be cheating if you did it right!
December 2023
What I learned from Do Hard Things
Do Hard Things is a recent book from an author of my favorite book about burnout (Peak Performance). It talks about why our traditional view of toughness is wrong.
October 2023
Halfway there
Realizing I'm statistically halfway through life at 36. Time is the one thing you can't get more of
July 2023
What I learned from Team Topologies
You can't escape Conway's Law. Might as well use it for good.
June 2023
Why taming architectural complexity is paramount
Unravel the hidden costs of architectural complexity in software engineering and learn practical strategies to tackle it. Boost productivity, reduce defects, and improve staff retention with insights from an MIT PhD thesis.
May 2023
Two types of complexity and their impact
Complicated code slows down junior devs, while complex systems impact senior devs more. Focus on managing system complexity & dependencies, not just simplifying code.
You can't fix the wrong abstraction
Unlock the secrets to combating architectural complexity in software development and learn to identify and fix the wrong abstraction. Boost productivity, reduce bugs, and retain more staff.
Eight things to know about LLMs
eightthings.pdf is the best paper I've read on what's going on in AI right now and why everyone is excited. Here's my summary.
April 2023
Insights for interviews from Kahneman's Noise
everything people say is bad about modern tech interviews is actually good 🤯
November 2022
What I learned from Staff Engineer by Will Larson
Staff Engineer was one of the more impactful books I've read in recent months. Went through the audiobook soon after becoming tech lead so the timing was perfect.
September 2022
Notes on A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks
In 1970 a paper came out that changed the world of business computing. It laid the ground work for modern databases.
July 2022
What makes a great software engineer?
In 2015 a group of researchers asked 59 experienced engineers at Microsoft "What makes a great software engineer?". Here's what they found.
April 2022
Code Review Practices for Refactoring Changes
Do you review refactoring pull requests differently than you do others? An empirical study of OpenStack, an open source cloud platform, says that you do and finds 6 common criteria.
December 2021
The Passion Paradox
burnout doesn't work the way you think
November 2021
Finding unresolved promises in JavaScript
JavaScript is a fantastic server-side language because it's async. That also makes it tricky. 💩 What happens when you swallow errors? Forget to resolve promises? Or run into a number of other anti-patterns
July 2021
What I learned from Software Engineering at Google
When I first picked up Software Engineering at Google I thought it was another one of those FAANG books full of lessons that make no sense at human scale. I was surprised, lessons apply to teams as small as 5.
Your career needs a vision
In his book, The Art of Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming says the key to a great career is vision. What does that really look like?
March 2021
Serverless Handbook coming Mar 31st
Serverless is the future. New book coming out Mar 31st and it's looking bomb