A post by Justin Searls on what he calls “full-breadth developers” - those with both technical and product capabilities - and how they are becoming the clear winners in the AI era as they can effectively leverage generative AI tools to rapidly deliver complete solutions without the communication overhead of traditional role segregation. As usual, Justin writes as if he’s in some sort of weird mind…
I run home automation with Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, and I’d always been a little uneasy about exposing my home network to the web for remote access. I’d set up SSL encryption and all that, but still felt uncomfortable having an open port in my router and to manage update and security for such an important and private service. I recently learned about Cloudflare Tunnel , part of…
Merge commits, squash commits, rebasing, requiring a linear history…how a team chooses - or does not choose - to manage changes to their codebase is an inevitable discussion at any software company. I’ve had this conversation many times before for Git, so I thought it was time to write down my own take on the subject. I’m no pedant, I don’t enforce a strict policy doing this on things I review, I…
RailsConf 2019 is here! No, really - here in Minneapolis, Minnesota! The local Ruby community is thrilled to welcome you to our hometown. Visiting the Twin Cities for the first time? Wondering what to wear? Where’s the good food and what’s a “Jucy Lucy”? Beer lover? I present to you the RailsConf 2019 Visitor’s Guide to Minneapolis, created with love by myself, Charles Nutter, and others at RubyMN…
At this point in my career, I’ve taken a fair number of job interviews in the tech industry. I’ve interviewed at companies ranging from large enterprises to tiny consultancies and small, bootstrapped product teams to high-growth, VC-funded startups. Interviewing is (regrettably) it’s own weird skillset, especially in software development. You’re not only expected to demonstrate that you’re…
If you don’t know much about GraphQL, you probably just identify it as the hip, shiny new thing companies are adopting to replace their RESTful APIs. Sure, sure – clients can ask for only what they need in a single request – but is that it? What really makes GraphQL so special? In this talk, you’ll be introduced to GraphQL beyond just the usual explanations of the query language and learn why…
Over 30,000 feet in the sky, in a plane without WiFi (which is more and more of a novelty these days), my eyes caught someone through the seats in front of me staring at the home screen of their smart phone. They flipped through the app icons, searching for… something . They opened the Facebook app only to find a “No Internet Connection” banner. More flipping through icon screens followed after a…
I wrote something for devproductivity.io about how I use Octobox to focus my attention on what’s important while still keeping an eye across many different projects. Link: “Focusing on what’s important: Managing GitHub notifications with Octobox” Many people wonder how some individuals can be so productive. It might seem that someone you know gets an especially copious amount of work done given…
A mixture of a talk on programming and a live classical music recital. I talk about parallelisms between music performance and programming - such as complexity, imposter syndrome, and true concentration - with unaccompanied clarinet performances throughout. Video (Keep Ruby Weird 2017 | Austin, Texas) Slides
When I was young, I never understood why my dad liked splitting and burning firewood so much. Every summer, my brother and I would play our parts. We’d haul large logs cut by my dad’s chainsaw from some fallen tree in the area (with permission, of course) in his pickup truck to our backyard. Then we’d split them by axe and hammer and stack the pieces at the bottom of the hill to season. Lastly,…