./writing
Notes on what broke and how it got fixed.
About one a month. Each is something I learned the hard way, written so you do not have to.
01 / ls -t ./writing
Engineering
Notes on a small sync engine
What I learned building Quire: logical clocks, why deletes are the hard part, and the test that pulls the network cable every night.
Craft
The boring parts of a command-line tool
Exit codes, help text, colour that turns itself off, and other details that make a tool feel finished.
Process
Reading other people’s code on the train
A forty-minute commute is a good reading list. How I pick a repository, what I look for and what I write down.
Tools
Feature flags are a database
Once a flag has an owner, a rollout and a history, it is data. Treat it like data and most of the mess goes away.
Process
A year of writing the test first, honestly
Twelve months of test-first development on real projects: where it helped, where it slowed me down, and what I kept.
02 / topics
Four things I keep coming back to.
Engineering
Retries, sync, queues and the parts of a system that fail at night.
Craft
The small details that make a tool feel finished.
Process
Reviews, tests and habits that keep a team calm.
Tools
What I use, what I dropped and why.
03 / subscribe --notes
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