Software Engineering Toolbox
A collection of posts for software engineers and engineering leaders
Sayings and mantras
- “Problems are good. We solve problems.” – adopt an optimistic, action-oriented attitude
- “If you like it, then you shoulda put a CI test on it.” – aka The Beyoncé Rule.
- “Win and help win” – a guiding philosophy for tech that is ambitious, positive-sum, and collective
Best practices
- Principles for AI-native engineering – How I use context, plans, worktrees, review, testing, and automation with coding agents.
- Harness engineering: How small pods move faster – Give coding agents clear context, boundaries, tools, and feedback loops.
- How to AI: Stop throwing away prompts. Start managing context.
- Auto-format all changed files with one command, for your AI agent – Stop telling your AI agents how to auto-format your code. Give them one command that auto-formats all files correctly.
- Principles for engineers – Focus on delivering value to customers. Communicate proactively. Encourage critique. Take initiative. Debug scientifically. Practice habits.
- Code Review best practices
- Design Docs for software architecture review
- Debug scientifically
- Auto-format and lint everything
- Automate dependency updates
Technical guides
- FastAPI for ML inference
- ML on a Mac
- Machine Learning quick start
- Learn Neural Networks with Andrej Karpathy
- Dark mode with CSS variables and Stimulus
- Embeddable JavaScript widgets
- Rails on Kubernetes
- A modern app tech stack, built for speed – why small teams can go faster with Rails + ViewComponent + Tailwind CSS + Hotwire
- API design patterns
Misc technical posts
- ML papers
- ML snippets
- Postgres tips
- Language syntax review for Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, and SQL
- Prevent pushing to main branch
- Practicing Scrum
- Learning Go
Reading list
Selections from my Reading list
Software Engineering
- Software Engineering At Google (Winters)
- The Phoenix Project (Kim)
- A Philosophy Of Software Design (Ousterhout)
- Clean Architecture (Fowler)
Business
- Principles: Life and Work (Dalio)
- Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations (Forsgren)
- Sprint (Knapp)
Product
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself (Bush)
Biographies
- Elon Musk (Vance)
- The Innovators (Isaacson)
- Steve Jobs (Isaacson)
Health
- Atomic Habits (Clear)
- The Power Of Habit (Duhigg)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman)
Philosophy
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Jorgenson)
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Taleb)
- The Obstacle Is The Way (Holiday)
Science
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (Deutsch)
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harari)