These are my longer essays.
Become a Product-First Software Engineer
I think many engineers would be better contributors if they started to think more about the customer impact of their work. ...
Posts
On commenting and approving pull requests
After reviewing a lot of pull requests, I’ve settled on a simple default: if my comments are all nitpicks, suggestions, questions, or non-blocking issues, I leave them and approve the PR at the same time. ...
Incremental Dependency Upgrades
When possible, I prefer to upgrade dependencies incrementally rather than making several version jumps. So, we try not to go from React 16 to 19. We go from 16 to 17, then to 18, and finally to 19. The Risks of Jumping Multiple Versions It’s very tempting to jump to the latest release. It feels like time travel; putting your application on the latest in the fewest number of steps. What’s not to like? ...
Dependencies Go Forward
A policy I favor with dependency management: go forward. Going backward is an exception that we must plan to remedy. Example Consider a CVE in a dependency at version 5.0 (v5.0). We’re advised that v6.0 and v4.0 are safe. Which way should we go, forward or backward? We want to default to forward. Even if we’ve been on v4.0 before and know it is compatible. Even if we aren’t sure that v6.0 is “solid” or if it takes some code changes to implement. ...
Catastrophic Mistakes Are a Team Failure
If people can make catastrophic mistakes on your team, the process is broken. ...
CI/CD and Engineer Morale
Why do software teams push continuous deployment so strongly? One of the most important and least discussed reasons is engineer morale. ...
Tradeoffs of Permanently Forking a Library
Permanently forking a library is something I’ve observed on several teams. But, there are tradeoffs that aren’t always obvious. ...
A Missing README Isn't a Missing README
A missing README is rarely just missing documentation. It usually signals other things, too. ...
Better Developer Experience With Friday Reboots
A developer experience practice I’ve recently picked up is routine Friday reboots of my workstation. I think this can make your workflow (and even perhaps your life as an engineer?) a little better. ...
How I Run a Fully-Remote Software Engineering Standup
I’ve been participating in fully-remote software standups every day for over a decade, and over the past two years, leading them, too. Here’s how I run the best standup meetings that I can. ...