The Observation Deck

Reading is important to me.

I just attended my thirtieth college reunion, and there were some clear trends among my mid-life peers.

In his classic Programming Perl — affectionately known to a generation of technologists as "the Camel Book" — Larry Wall famously wrote of the three virtues of a programmer as laziness, impatience, and hubris: If we’re going to talk about good software de…

Recently, the New Stack had a piece excerpting some of my conversation with Gergely Orosz.

Note: This was originally published as a LinkedIn post on December 20, 2025.

Note: This was originally published as a LinkedIn post on November 11, 2025.

On a Sunday night not too long ago, something extraordinary happened in West Oakland: the Oakland Ballers — an independent baseball team not even two years old — won the Pioneer League championship, bringing a baseball championship to Oakland for the first

Software is hard (yes, even in an era of vibe coding), and systems software — the silent engine room of modern infrastructure — is especially so.

Note: Thie was co-authored with Steve Tuck, and originally appeared on the Oxide blog.

A year and a half ago, I wrote about the unconscionable John Fisher, the inept, soulless owner of the formerly-Oakland A’s.

My son is a college baseball player.

USENIX made the decision this week to discontinue its flagship Annual Technical Conference.

How it started Four years ago, we were struggling to hire.

By all accounts, Pat Gelsinger is affable, technically sharp, hard-working, and decent.

Sometime in late 2007, we had the idea of a DTrace conference.

Over the summer, I hit an anniversary of sorts: I’ve been blogging for two decades (!).

Note: This was co-authored with Steve Tuck, and originally appeared on the Oxide blog.

Paul Graham’s Founder Mode is an important piece, and you should read it if for no other reason that “founder mode” will surely enter the lexicon (and as Graham grimly predicts: “as soon as the concept of founder mode becomes established, people will start

We ran into an interesting issue recently.

Years ago, Jeff Bezos famously quipped that "your margin is my opportunity."