How I Organize a Meetup

I’ve been organizing Meetups for a decade, starting with Vim Chicago and Chicago Elixir, and now running Maine JS from Portland, Maine. In honor of our most recent Meetup, here’s a list of my favorite organizer tips. ...

February 3, 2025

My Annual Review 2024

Here’s my annual review covering 2024. ...

December 31, 2024

Hard-Won Software Development Habits

This post is about how to write software well. It was inspired by this post with a similar title. Read it and write yours. ...

November 27, 2024

We Should Take This Outside

TONY: We should take this outside. ...

November 24, 2024

Being the Third Engineer

I was the third engineer hired by my company, not counting our technical co-founder. I like that position, and it seems to play to my strengths. ...

October 16, 2024

Comfort With Discomfort

Today I’d like to talk about a quality that’s essential to success as a computer programmer. Let’s call it “comfort with discomfort.” ...

September 3, 2024

The Secret to Being a 10x Engineer

Our industry has a concept of “10x engineers”, individual contributors who have the impact of ten colleagues. How can you become one? I’ll try to answer that in this post. ...

July 26, 2024

Find Every Debugging Trail Marker

If you’ve ever watched me debug, you might think I’m moving slowly. That’s because I try hard to find every marker on the debugging trail. I believe this is one of the most valuable skills in debugging. ...

June 17, 2024

How I Review Code, Part 2

Reviewing code is tricky. When I’m doing it, I’m trying to achieve a few things at once. In this post, I’d like to document the ways I try to add value via code reviews. ...

June 6, 2024

How to Deliver Code Every Day

I recently calculated that I merge 0.8 pull requests every day into my team repo. “How to Deliver Code Every 0.8 Days” didn’t sing, so let’s say I merge about one PR every day, delivering one or more features to production. I like this velocity, and in this post, I’ll explain how you can achieve it yourself. ...

February 15, 2024

Don’t miss my next essay

Hear from me immediately when I post: no ads, unsubscribe anytime.