Lessons from legacy codebases
Distributed systems fail in ways that are hard to predict. After years of debugging production incidents, certain patterns keep recurring. This post explores a few.
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Why constraints breed creativity
Performance optimization is a tempting distraction. Every line of code that exists to optimize one specific case is a line that must be maintained and understood forever.
From the archive
The tools we reach for shape our thinking. I've spent the last decade in terminals and shells, and it's changed how I approach problem-solving in subtle ways.
About this site
I write about software architecture, distributed systems, and the craft of programming. Posts are infrequent but hopefully worth the wait.
Thoughts on craft. Updated monthly.
Elsewhere
Occasional writing on design topics. Past essays here.