development articles

Sustainable development — code should be interesting, not frantic. Longer cycles, fewer all-nighters. Sustainable growth — attract users who already […]

2012, Thursday afternoon, sprint review. Twelve smart engineers, three product people, zero decisions. Every proposal dissolved into “yeah, that could […]

Rediscovered the fun of shipping. Felt like 2013 when I hacked random APIs together for the thrill of it. Picked […]

Two weeks ago I sat through a board call with a seed-stage startup. Burn rate north of “I’d rather not […]

When you messaged me last Thursday, if I’m not mixing up my calendar invites — you asked a deceptively simple […]

Last week I found myself comparing two pull requests: both touched the same service, both under 200 lines, yet one […]

First week at mindnow, I walked into a planning meeting and instantly felt outclassed — three people were quoting Erlang […]

Dear Tim, Your note popped up on my screen last Monday around 23:40. I was about to shut the laptop […]

Falsehoods Junior Developers believe about becoming Senior Habits of great software engineers Proper Software Development Estimations Why software projects fail […]

Last Thursday I was reviewing a pull-request for a 200-line Swift UI tweak in the morning and helping untangle a […]

Dear Robert, The two-sentence version: the code isn’t your code, and feeling bruised about it is normal. Everything after this […]

Back when my Linked In still said “Junior Rails Dev (contract)” I had a very cinematic idea of what “Senior” […]

Hello Alex, I still remember the week after my own graduation — half-terrified, half-buzzing on cheap espresso, convinced that one […]

Dear Friend, I read your note yesterday morning, coffee still brewing, and the frustration in your words felt familiar (I’ve […]

Dear JK, Your message landed in my inbox late Friday night, right as I was about to close the laptop […]

I still have the ZIP file from 2007. One PHP script, 9 KB, no folders in sight. Hosting was two […]

Networking as an introvert CTO Database Migrations Proper Documentation Habits of great software engineers Networking as an introvert CTO Database […]

I still remember a Sunday night last year when my phone would not shut up — PagerDuty, Slack, even a […]

I still remember my first week at a mid-size telco in 2011. On Monday I pushed a tiny CSS fix; […]

I had a call last week with a non-technical founder who pitched me a “digital allowance” app for kids. Ten […]

August 1st 2012, 9:30 a.m. on the NYSE open. Knight Capital flips the switch on a new release—and instantly starts […]

I stopped counting how many times I’ve stepped into a new client’s repo expecting Swiss precision and found a Jenga […]

Tuesday night, somewhere between sip three and four of espresso, I caught myself rewriting the same helper function for the […]

I’d rank database migrations right next to dentist appointments and moving apartments on the “things engineers postpone until absolutely necessary” […]

I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching a junior dev hover over the “send” button in Slack, type a question, […]

Back in 2012 I inherited a codebase that still had Subversion keywords sprinkled all over the files – $Id$, $Author$, […]

The first time an offshore agency locked our GitLab repo because an invoice was a couple of days late, I […]

I still remember a hiring session from late 2022: two junior applicants, same age, same enthusiasm. One had just finished […]

I still remember the first time an agency sent me a quote that started with a one-liner—“Design: $50k, Build: $150k.” […]

It was a Friday night in 2018, and we were in a rented coworking space. Lukewarm Club-Mate bottles were everywhere, […]

2017. I’m two weeks into a “senior developer” gig at a seed-stage startup, happily shipping features, when the founders corner […]

I have an irrational love for documentation. Give me a quiet hour, a mug of half-cold espresso, and a blank […]

I once lost half a Sunday to a single question: “How long would it take us to build a mobile […]

I wrapped up my backlog last Tuesday by noon and spent the next hour rearranging sticky notes just so it […]

I was staring at a whiteboard the other day, marker in hand, trying to decide whether we should build yet […]

I’m jet-lagged, running on too much espresso, and decided to finally hit “publish” on the notes I’ve been stashing in […]

I was re-reading Nixon’s 1969 “silent majority” speech last week (Smithsonian ran a good breakdown in 2017), mostly because YouTube’s algorithm […]

I still remember walking into a new gig a few years back, cloning the repo, and feeling an almost physical […]

I finished “Atomic Habits” on a delayed flight, half-listening to the gate announcements and underlining sentences with the only writing […]

As you probably guessed from the silence in your inbox — I missed this week’s newsletter slot. Nothing dramatic happened. […]

I spent last week digging through old HR docs, trying to stitch together a halfway decent career ladder for our […]

I still have the calendar invite from the day we pushed our very first MVP live — 03:47 AM, too […]

I got an email the other day from a hosting provider bragging about “five-nines uptime.” Looked impressive, until the fine […]

This piece belongs to the ongoing Technical Manager Guide. I’m writing it for leads who suddenly find themselves in charge […]

This piece is part of the ongoing Founders Guide. I’m jotting these notes while helping a handful of first-year startups wrestle […]

This piece belongs to the Technical Manager Guide I’m slowly publishing for leads who want to scale without turning into […]

Tuesday’s stand-up started with the same sentence from two different teams — “The build suddenly takes fifteen minutes, what changed?” […]

🚀 Founders Guide 2022 📚 Q&A for Startup Founders 📰 Previous Newsletter Issues 🛠️ How to be a better technical […]

Update 2021: I first drafted this piece back in 2018, roughly eighteen months after I took over engineering at a […]