Minimum Viable Blog

For reasons known only to God, I watched every episode (18 seasons and change) of Jet Lag: The Game this year.

My friend Larry is getting on in age.

A neighborhood friend is talking about her husband.

A paradox: when we try to applaud work, we often efface it.

These laws have some exceptions, but I’ve found them broadly useful for navigating the current hype wave, and nearly always correct.

A lot of teams procrastinate code review, phone it in, or get stuck in endless back-and-forth on every PR.

For the last 20 years or so I’ve been trying out a new way of programming, one that (surprisingly) doesn’t use any LLMs or AI coding agents at all.

Uniform distribution If you roll a 20-sided die (commonly called a d20), there’s an equal chance of rolling any number between 1 and 20.

Today I had an interesting problem to solve.

You know how sometimes when you don’t pay enough attention, two similar but not identical things will occupy the same space in your brain?

In March 2023, I posted: Just thinking about how “I’ve fully recovered from burnout” is a sentence I have never seen or heard someone say.

Religion is offended by the literal approach.

If you want to succeed at something or be a certain kind of person, what should you do?

Definitions Horror stories come in multiple flavors.

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.

Since July of last year, I’ve put over 500 miles (800 km) on my Specialized Turbo Tero X 4.0.

The following adages have been valuable to me over the course of my career.

Some people have never eaten a whole steamed artichoke.

Suppose Gregor Samsa had awoken to find himself a “horrible vermin” and the entire thrust of the story had been his efforts to communicate to his family that it was still him, it was Gregor, and as readers we felt certain they would take good care of him…

Record scratch.

(Inspired by a conversation with my good friend.)

tl;dr: I’m organizing a monthly community event in support of open-source software.

Since April, our family has put over 500 miles (800 km) on our Tern GSD S10.

Last revision: 2025-05-07 This is an opiniated set of guidelines for English-language resumes that effectively communicate high-value information at a glance.

Quick poll.

I haven’t received any money or free products for my opinions nor do I have any affiliate links on my blog.

You can find all the code for this series on GitHub.

You can find all the code for this series on GitHub.

You can find all the code for this series on GitHub.

You can find all the code for this series on GitHub.

In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), we see a famous exchange between Yoda (an archetypical “wise elder” figure) and Luke Skywalker, his young apprentice.

A software developer has, in theory, the ability to walk into an outhouse with an old laptop and emerge a few days later with something worth millions of dollars.

Media here refers to books, movies, journalism, music, video games, and other published content of any genre.

I’ve made some big changes to my personal tech ecosystem over the last few years and discovered some great applications along the way.

Software projects are most efficient when, at any given time, each contributor is focused on a different concern.

I used to be solidly on team “anyone can code.”

At time of writing, Netflix’s Standard plan costs 15.49 USD, while its Standard with ads plan costs 6.99 USD.

Suppose a given audience can, in a majority of some kind, be expected to misinterpret a piece of information when presented factually.

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.

Any 21st-century definition of art has to pass a few tests.

This was originally written in 2018.

Imagine you’ve misheard the lyrics to a song.

One hundred percent of people’s confusion about Mastodon comes from journalists doing a bad job explaining it.

People have an excessive tendency to reason by definition.

I have a beard now.

I’m relatively young on the programming scene (I wasn’t around when FORTRAN came out or anything) so this is a hubristic thing to say, but it feels like we’ve reached Peak Programming Languages.

Wordle took social media by storm in December 2021.

Building a software keyboard is almost always a Bad Idea.

Your current credit card can be used in four different ways: Typing in the card number.

We’ve all seen this one, right?