June 11, 2025

Why I'm Writing to You

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.

May 29, 2025

Four Things I've Changed My Mind About in Engineering

I think a mark of a great engineer is being willing to change one’s mind when presented with new information. Here are four technological things I’ve changed my mind about.

May 14, 2025

How I Approach Feature Requests

Receiving feature requests is part of running a software team. Here’s how I handle them.

April 29, 2025

Don't Guess

This is a response to “Don’t Guess” from the excellent “The Best Programmers I Know” by Matthias Endler. My goal is to crystallize my understanding of this trait.

April 7, 2025

Your Software Is Confusing

If something in your software is confusing to a customer, it is confusing.

March 26, 2025

Why I'm "All In" on TypeScript

I’ve added TypeScript to several projects I’ve worked on. In this post, I’d like to discuss why I think TypeScript is essential and document my expectations around it.

March 4, 2025

"Hit It Twice" Customer Service

I recently learned a practice for customer communication that I’d like to document. It’s called “Hit It Twice.”

February 3, 2025

How I Organize a Meetup

I’ve been organizing Meetups for a decade, starting with Vim Chicago and Chicago Elixir, and now running Maine JS from Portland, Maine. In honor of our most recent Meetup, here’s a list of my favorite organizer tips.

December 31, 2024

My Annual Review 2024

Here’s my annual review covering 2024.

September 3, 2024

Comfort With Discomfort

Today I’d like to talk about a quality that’s essential to success as a computer programmer. Let’s call it “comfort with discomfort.”