What Does Compute Cost?
A share of a public company has a price. Look up a stock and you'll see it immediately: $42, $180, $900. Tomorrow it'll probably be something else.
That number looks like the market, but it's reall...
Joel Martinez
Software Engineer at Xamarin. Founded ONETUG. Author of 'C# 5 First Look' http://amzn.com/1849686769.
Latest posts
Digging Up the First Version of CodeCube
I added an old CodeCube archive to the site. It's a pile of early CodeCube posts that I was able to pull out of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Not a perfect restoration or anything like th...
What I've Been Up To Since 2025
The last year or so has been a whirlwind.
Some of it turned into blog posts, some of it turned into features, some of it turned into separate repos, and some of it is still sitting in branches and ...
Project Estimation with Dependency Graphs and Monte Carlo Simulation
I’ve written before about why averages are such a dangerous way to reason about uncertain systems. In Monte Carlo Simulation for Projections and Estimates...
Modern Law of Leaky Abstractions
Back in 2002, Joel Spolsky wrote The Law of Leaky Abstractions, and it's one of those pieces that's stuck with me ever since I first read it. 23+ years later 💀 and I'm still bringing it up in conv...
Monte Carlo Simulation for Projections and Estimates
I first read The Flaw of Averages by Sam Savage about 15 years ago, back when I worked in the finance industry. I don’t remember every chapter, but I do remember the central idea—and it has shaped ...
Photonic: A 3D Visualizer for the Web
I've been on a bit of a journey lately exploring different ways to visualize and interact with data on my site. After creating the Article Link Map...
Cowboy Coders and the Shift to Structure - How Teams Grow
Probably every engineer will have worked with that one person who thrives in the chaos. A system breaks, customers are blocked, and before anyone else has even read the incident report, they’re alr...
The Accidental Path
There’s a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned that my friend Matt Mazur recently tweeted about. He wrote:

“It’s a risky strategy because the most likely outcome is you explore and discover...
Moving Fast vs Root Cause Culture - How Teams Grow
“Move fast and break things.”
The phrase came out of Facebook’s early days and quickly became a shorthand mantra across the industry. It’s catchy, it feels daring, and it captures a mindset that va...
Tiered Thinking in the Age of AI
Not too long ago, everyone was wondering whether $20 a month for an AI coding tool was worth it. Today, devs are easily blowing past $200 worth of capacity in a single billing cycle, and it’s easy ...
Timelines
I've been writing recently about posts being worthless in the AI era, and explored different ways of navigating content...
Why Agile So Often Falls Short
I first experienced “agile” back in 2004 when I started working at what was then called EA Tiburon. The agile manifesto was still a relatively new concept and I was so excited to be a part of worki...
Chloroplast – A .NET Static Site Generator for Docs
“When I ask myself ‘what would have the most impact today?’ I sit down and write documentation.”
— Miguel de Icaza
Documentation has been a big part of my career; working on Microsoft Learn, as the...
How Much Do You Need To Plan - How Teams Grow
When you look at how teams ship software, two extremes pop into view....