This week a colleague taught me about Simplified Technical English in the context of agentic software development. I’m fascinated by technical writing techniques, so I intend to explore this. To start, I took ten instruction-like sentences from this blog, and asked ChatGPT to convert them to STE. ...
Want to get better at technical writing? I’ve been writing prose (READMEs, wikis, and this blog) with Vale for months. It’s helps me write better, faster. Here’s what I’ve learned. ...
Prettier formats code in fenced code blocks! When I type three backticks and then a code, Prettier evaluates the code in the block and tries to format it per my global .prettierrc. ...
Always leave something behind. If you find something interesting, leave a trace that you were there. ...
Today I gave a talk to my team about the Twelve-Factor App Methodology. ...
Eight years ago I wrote a post called You Should Blog. In it, I made an argument that I still believe in: public, professional writing is something every engineer should try. Today, I want to share why I write, and have for over a decade. ...
I’ve been organizing Meetups for a decade, starting with Vim Chicago and Chicago Elixir, and now running Maine JS from Portland, Maine. Here’s my practical guide on how to start a Meetup group, based on what’s worked for me. ...
I’ve been a practitioner of Shawn Wang’s ‘Learn in Public’ for years. In this post, I’ll share a list of ways I’ve found to learn in public. ...
When preparing feature development work, I write Gherkin-style tickets, which follow the “Given/When/Then” format. Many people call these stories, and I do, too. This technique is incredibly effective! But why? In this post, I’ll try to answer that question. ...
I’ve been giving technical talks for a few years, and I’m speaking at the Vim Chicago Meetup next month about integrating React with Vim. In this post, I’m going to use that opportunity as an excuse to document my speaking process. ...