Robert Roskam's Writing

Anti-Canonical, The World is not so Monolithic or Monotonic

Anti-hustle, a better way of being

On how Jevons' Paradox related to AI coding is weird

The biggest misconception in maximizing leverage with AI agents

Hiring and getting hired is harder than ever

No LLM was harmed in the writing of this message

Even when the AI bubble pops...

A software engineering organization is a system that produces a system.

There is this tendency—if not an outright need—for those involved in the actual practice of writing code to create a guiding philosophy for the choices they're making.

We all know that we should write tests for our code.

The strongest engineers write things down in a place where others can find them.

Saying no at work is hard, especially when it relates to more work assigned to you.

100% test coverage is not enough, but 80% is probably fine.

Back when I first started writing code in Notepad, I didn’t think I was really writing software.

Ever read a book or listen to a lecture about a topic and get to the end knowing that you definitely learned something, but you have no idea on how to act on it?

GraphQL is kind of like a pick up truck.

I have a been making a very large mistake for the past few years.

Large Language Models (LLMs), as with all things hyped up, have a reason for the hype.

Most people know a Swiss Army Knife on sight.

After an app or system does well, there’s often talk about version 2 or phase 2 or release 2.

You did it.

Kubernetes, k8s, Uberkitties—whatever you call it.

There is a rather rote bit of advice that people should “finish what they start.”

"We don't have tests for that, because it's too complicated."

The most useful tech is the stuff you take for granted but can’t live without.

Software engineers make things for other people to solve some kind of problem.

A few years back, I needed to migrate calendar data from one system to another.

Early in my career, I got asked to write a custom calendar system.

Several years back I was working for a company with a system that was having a lot of performance issues.

Once upon a time, I had a system that needed to be tested heavily for any change we made to it.

"I'm sorry to those who come after me.

Work is a lot of life.

I remember the first time I was asked to give an estimate to someone.

There are way too many of project management systems.

Back in 2006, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror made this legendary post in which he resurfaced two legendary pieces.

Back in 2006, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror made this legendary post.

There’s this fear in tech that you need make sure that people know what you’ve been busy in, and you need to continually re prove yourself to everyone else.

Checklists have seen a recent resurgence in popularity.

Recently, there’s been a spat of articles about how the hiring process is broken in our industry.

I’ve previously written in support of checklists and using them.

I’m shy about adding dependencies to projects I’m working on.

I’m sick and tired of people saying, “We do Agile development.”