Ben Vinegar on software, startups, and other interests.
If you’re a software engineer and you’re feeling anxious, disoriented, or vaguely defensive lately — you’re not alone. AI is changing how we build things. Fast. And for many developers, it’s triggering a new, uncomfortable realization: I’m going to have to learn a whole bunch of new stuff. If you’re over 30, there’s a good chance the current software development landscape is the only one you’ve…
This is mostly a verbatim repost of a Twitter thread about my impending Sentry departure from Wednesday, October 30th, 2024, but with some added commentary and laid out for the web. Some news: Friday is my last day at Sentry . Hard to believe it, because this is the kind of job and outcome I’ve always wanted. To build a product and company that helps so many devs ship better software, that’s cool…
Back in January I launched an open source product. It’s called Counterscale , and it’s a web analytics service to help you understand your website traffic. Feature-wise, Counterscale isn’t that impressive. It does considerably less than Google Analytics or other commercial offerings. But what’s different about Counterscale – and why it may be of interest to you – is that it isn’t a managed SaaS…
For what feels like forever now, there’s been an ongoing debate about the rising complexity of web development. Developers feel overwhelmed with the amount of choice they face when starting a new project. Which framework – or now, metaframework – should you choose? Which testing library? Which build tool? Which cloud provider? There’s a real belief, I think, that these choices will be a crucial…
The late 2000s/early 2010s was the last time I remember where local communities were a big part of finding success if you were launching a web startup. I experienced this firsthand in Toronto at a volunteer-run event called DemoCamp, where hackers and tech entrepreneurs got together to demo early versions of their apps/products. You had 6 minutes to present your demo – in person – to an audience…
It’s been 10 years since myself and Anton Kovalyov published Third-party JavaScript (Manning, 2013). As far as I know, it’s the first and only book dedicated entirely to teaching readers how to build JavaScript applications that execute on someone else’s web pages. Applications like embedded widgets, analytics scripts, and yes, ads. Anton and myself were interested in the topic because our day job…