Category: Best practices
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Happiness Minutes
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth kind of invented efficiency as an industrial measurement. And then they had a big fight with Frederick fucking Winslow Taylor about it. See, Taylor wanted humans to be part of the machine. The Gilbreths wanted the machine to serve the humans. Taylor thought that standardizing human behavior would make better factories…
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How guardrails enable you to work at AI speed
On December 10, I’m joining a bunch of cool people on a LeadDev panel to talk about guardrails and AI use. Register to join us! As we were doing the pre-panel discussion, I started thinking about the metaphor we were using. Guardrails are not uniquely American, but they are very American. We see them so…
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Bluesky and your brand
Get your account established Watch before you post Remember that this part of the internet is permanent Be kind and human, as well as a brand
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Linters and style guides and standards and tests
Consistency matters. Consistency matters for branding, because of copyright and recognition reasons, because you’re investing lots of money into that exact arrangement of letters. Consistency matters for code, because computers are terrible at approximation and “close enough”. Consistency matters for documentation, because human language is really hard and weird. Consistency matters, but it’s wicked hard to…
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Technically Lazy
Conflating code-y and technical means that a lot of technical people who could do the job really well are filtered out based on a lazy habit of thought.
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Guardrails and Plimsoll Lines
In an era where we have to assume that our data is being collected, and the data we collect, I think we need to get more nuanced about our guardrails. We need to think about what the worst possible outcome is, and then what the worst likely outcome is. We need to consider the dangers in different…
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It’s December Eve, are you ready?
You are probably familiar with the retail rhythms of the seasons. You can think of it as what kind of candy you can buy, when chocolate moves smoothly from ghosts to pumpkins to tree decorations to hearts. If you work in any kind of e-commerce, from November to mid-January is a code-freeze all-hands-on-deck experience. Software…
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Code standards and my roof
Two (2) months after buying our first house, a giant hailstorm rolled through South Minneapolis, and damaged practically everyone’s roof. This is what homeowner’s insurance is for, so we filed, like everyone within like 2 miles of us. This was the week that the roofers arrived to tear off the old shingles and replace them.…
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Building codes and the price of progress
Safety codes are a pain in the butt. Here is my reflection on our electrical code.
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Refactoring, a reflection on unpacking
I wanted toast this morning. To get it, I unpacked 3 boxes and grouped a bunch of other things together, and it took me about 30 minutes. #refactoring We just moved house, after 9 years in one place. And we moved from a late-70s rambler to an Arts & Crafts foursquare. So right now, all…
