Archive of posts with category 'engineering'
Consistency is better than surge; or how to not burn out
I spent way too much time and effort working on this blog. I forgot consistency mattered over immediate output. I was burnt out. I put a too much effort writing and coding this website that it stopped being fun or interesting. Taking things easy is the way to go. Consistency...
The duct-tape and strings approach to software is unfairly maligned
The “duct-tape and strings” approach to building software prioritizes functionality and rapid iteration. That comes at the cost of design perfection and technical debt. It stresses the heck out of proponents of careful planning. But it’s a valid approach to real-world pressures and can lead to successful results.
How to prioritize profit while supporting innovation
It’s easy to be seduced by the latest ‘innovation’ fads. But it’s important to focus on aligning innovation with core business goals and customer needs. Doing so will protect teams from the innovation trap and achieve long-term success. A lot of this essay is inspired by Christen’s book ‘The Innovation...
Creating and leading high-trust engineering teams for success
If you’re starting a team, you want it to be a strong, cohesive group. One that trust all its members. I call such teams ‘high-trust’ teams. In this piece, I expand on what such a team might behave, and how you could go about creating one. A strong team with...
How to evaluate the right choice of technology for your team
Choosing the right tool or library for software projects can feel like navigating a minefield. This essay will offer a practical framework for evaluating competing technologies. You’ll be able to make better and informed choices that align with your project’s needs. There is no ‘perfect option’, so one must understand...
How my Fermentation Hobby Helps Me as a Software Engineer
For a software engineer, technical expertise is of course of the greatest importance. However, how they approach solving problems can significantly shape how they get their everyday tasks accomplished too. Through a hobby of mine I’ve discovered an unexpected wellspring of professional growth. Fermentation. This seemingly random hobby has become...
What's next for AI? My predictions for the next 10 years
Explainable AI, optical AI, analog AI, and meta-learning. I predict the culmination of optimizing massive generative models will result generative AI being turned into a commodity, and these four areas will be the next frontiers of innovation in machine learning.
Book Review: Learning to Learn and the Navigation of Moods by Gloria P. Flores
One can create a mindset highly open and receptive to learning quickly by managing one’s moods. That’s what learning researcher and psychologist Gloria Flores argues in her book Learning to Learn. She argues that only by modifying the less-productive (for learning) moods towards more productive ones, does learning get easier....
A tale of the treacherous task of Kubernetes upgrade
This is a tale of unmitigated blast radius in networking. I broke two of our developer environments the second day of joining the infrastructure squad. We discovered several potential issues with our workflow and engineering practices. Let me explain how that happened, and what we did to fix it. We’ll...
