Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m going to pick on Patreon, not because they’re special, but because they’re typical. Here is a quote from a blog post in which they Back-pedalled a change to their pricing structure: We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into … Continue reading →

A phrase I used in a discussion today. Developers are familiar with “code smells”, aspects of a codebase that aren’t necessarily wrong but do make you take a deeper look. By analogy, a culture smell surprising, but not necessarily wrong, … Continue reading →

Seen on the twitters: 1) Bad reasons why tech startups have incredibly large mobile teams even though from an engineering perspective they don’t need it. This is the No True Scotsman fallacy, as no true software department needs more than, … Continue reading →

My current record of FOSDEM attendance sees me there once per decade: my first visit was in 2007 and I’m having breakfast in my hotel at the end of my second trip. I should probably get here more often. Unlike … Continue reading →

Sometimes, what you want out of a software system is something unexciting. Something proven to work, that’s well-understood, and has had all of the kinks smoothed out over years (or even decades) of refinement. Of course, what you get when … Continue reading →

This is a post about marmalade. A “life hack”, if you will, that I learnt from Simon Stewart is to find things that I don’t do because I don’t like them, or think I don’t like them, and to do … Continue reading →

It’s been almost a year since my first day at Facebook, sitting in an overcrowded meeting room with my bootcamp class because 42 Earlham Street was full and it’d be another week before we moved to 10 Brock Street, with … Continue reading →

Gulliver meets the Oopers Lemuel Gulliver’s world was black. No light, no sound, infinite darkness and solitude. Am I dead?, he asked himself. No, surely not. He opened his eyes. Still, everything remained black. My God, I am dead! Lemuel … Continue reading →