Architecture always leaks
Auditing data-heavy companies reveals the same pattern: asynchronous data processing crammed into the synchronous web stack. The contention shows in performance, delivery, and team dynamics. Isolation fixes all three.
Architecture
LLMs everywhere, even in cars
LLMs are no longer a tab you open. They're the interface layer between intent and every system underneath. This post maps what ambient AI, edge inference, and agent-as-infrastructure mean for how you design modern software.
Your codebase is a palimpsest
Every legacy codebase is a palimpsest: layers of decisions written on top of each other, none fully erased. Geoffrey Dhuyvetters argues that what looks like technical debt is often stratigraphy, and you read it before you rewrite it.
The disconnect between management and engineering
A mobile app, past its usefulness, was days from being phased out. One email reversed the decision. No discussion. No input from engineering. This is what happens when decision-making drifts too far from the work.
Three Claudes walk into a codebase
The machines aren't replacing developers, they're promoting them. You're no longer just writing code; you're managing agents, reviewing output, and setting standards. Three Claudes walk into a codebase, and suddenly you're a manager.
How we rewrote our tech stack in under a day
Last week, we deleted 16,000 lines of code, rewrote 11,500, migrated frameworks, ripped out React, and swapped our entire CSS setup with AI. It took less than 6 hours.
Technical debt lost its excuse
Technical debt used to justify meetings, trade-offs, and dedicated sprints. AI has changed that. Cleanup is now fast, cheap, and continuous. Teams that stop debating and start fixing unlock faster delivery and better outcomes.
I'm using my engineering colleagues as my personal agents
A couple of months ago, I was copy-pasting prompts into ChatGPT. Now I'm shipping features, running tests, managing branches, and keeping documentation alive, with a team of agents doing the heavy lifting. All by myself.
QA is the last bottleneck
Software development's feedback loop has compressed from years to minutes, but QA remains the last bottleneck, the one place still dependent on human judgment. AI is rapidly closing that gap, and before the year is out, that final human checkpoint may no longer be necessary.
Bots and Boundaries: Who do you blame when the bot defames? (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of Bots and Boundaries, a three-part series on AI agents in open source.
Bootstrapping a birding database using GenAI (Part 2)
Part 2 of the article about Mossie, when it was faced with scaling to include every bird in the world, complete with photos, sounds, and icons.
Why AI makes engineering teams smaller, but not simpler
AI is changing what small teams can ship, boilerplate gone, prototypes faster, experimentation cheaper. But lower costs of building don't mean lower costs of building the wrong thing. It just means you can do it faster.
Bootstrapping a birding database using GenAI (Part 1)
A small birding app with 300 manually entered species faced an ambitious challenge: scale to include every bird in the world, complete with photos, sounds, and icons. This article explores how the team used GenAI to bootstrap a comprehensive birding database from scratch.
The unbundling of engineering value (Part 2)
AI won't make software engineers redundant. It will expose what engineering was always supposed to be about: understanding systems, not just writing code.
The unbundling of engineering value (Part 1)
Here's part one of a post I shared with our team on the radical change and evolution of our jobs. AI won't make software engineers redundant. It will expose what engineering was always supposed to be about: understanding systems, not just writing code.