Disclaimer: views are not my own.

• Do you actually want things to be hard?

  26 Mar 2025

  There’s an instructional video from guitarist Joe Pass where he eloquently instructs the viewer: “Never play anything that’s hard. If it’s hard, don’t play it.” Joe Pass was a legendary jazz guitarist, known among other things for his astounding technical ability. He’s a virtuoso, as evidenced by his solo albums Virtuoso, Virtuoso No. 2, and Virtuoso No. 3. And let’s not forget: Virtuoso No. 4! How could he possibly achieve his fluency on the instrument by avoiding playing things that are hard?

• Who Cares About Your Tests?

  13 Sep 2024

  Something that I’ve been pontificating on in my chamber as of late are the definitions of various types of tests that people often treat as fact. “Unit”, “integration”, “acceptance”, “end-to-end”—these are all terms that at various points in time I’ve heard very confident assertions on their true, implacable meaning.

• I Don't Like Pull Requests

  23 Aug 2024

  How about this for a code review process: one person goes away, does some amount of work resulting in code changes, and then creates a PR that others review more-or-less at their convenience. Ideally, they work in small increments so the review can be more focused. Feedback is shared through threads of comments, and once there is some level of approval, the changes can be merged into the mainline of the repository. Rinse, wash, repeat.