Posts

Today I’d like to highlight something I built with some colleagues that I think is cool: the dynamic paths of Hashrocket’s daily learning site, Today I Learned (TIL). ...

I often reflect on a conversation from years ago with a former Army boss. It’s foundational to how I understand leadership. He said that being a leader means you have to “Genuinely care.” ...

Always leave something behind. If you find something interesting, leave a trace that you were there. ...

How do I “get up to speed” in a new codebase? Changing it. ...

Approach caching with caution. ...

I think many engineers would be better contributors if they started to think more about the customer impact of their work. ...

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. ...

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? ...

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. ...

If people can make catastrophic mistakes on your team, the process is broken. ...