Early in my career, I built ticketing systems for arts venues. Our platform could be bulletproof - but if the client's backend fell over, the on-sale still failed. That taught me how to build resilience around dependencies I couldn't control.
In 2020, I wrote a theoretical warning about microservices. Then I spent three years inside 120 of them. Here's what the theory didn't prepare me for.
In 2023, I wrote about sustainable software development. I focused on engineering practices. I should have focused on whether the business underneath could survive.
I've watched companies chase shiny technology for nearly two decades. The pattern is always the same: promises of elegance, delivered complexity, and teams that can't sustain it.
I've worked in PRINCE2 environments where weeks were spent on documents nobody read. I've worked in 'Agile' shops that were just as ceremonial. The best teams I've been on had almost no process at all.
Most failed systems I've rescued weren't too rigid - they were too flexible. Built for futures that never arrived. I've spent years untangling the results.
I've spent years rescuing systems with no documentation. Weeks reverse-engineering logic someone could have explained in ten minutes. The cost of not writing things down is paid over and over.
Teaching assembly programming for C64, ZX Spectrum, NES, and Amiga through authentic development environments. Because modern abstractions hide how computers actually work, and the best way to learn optimization is by programming systems with 64KB of RAM.
A 30-year-old family card game rebuilt with Phoenix LiveView. Features strategic AI opponents, real-time multiplayer for 4-8 players, and three distinct visual themes. Proves Elixir isn't just for messaging systems - it's perfect for complex, stateful games.
Brings CSS Highlights API performance to your Markdown workflow. Perfect for technical blogs drowning in code examples - this Remark plugin delivers the same 90% DOM reduction without touching your build pipeline. Astro and Next.js ready.
Born from frustration with bloated syntax highlighting, this library slashes DOM nodes by 90% using the CSS Highlights API. What used to take 180KB and thousands of spans now takes 45KB and renders in a fraction of the time.