Recent content on Observe and Report
A few jobs ago, I worked with an engineer named Mike. Mike is one of those quietly brilliant engineers who has no online presence and nothing to prove. He didn’t go to college for computer science or anything at all related to it (if my recollection is correct, he majored in Philosophy). Mike wrote some of the best code I’ve ever seen: Wonderfully boring, straightforward, and devoid of…
Or, why I’m a grumpy old man who thinks they don’t make them like they used to Welcome to 2025. LLMs have captured the hearts and minds (AKA VC dollars) of everyone and they are literally the only thing happening at all in the entire tech industry. They are the cause of and solution to every problem and will both save and destroy the world. LLMs are at least a potential solution for a…
If there’s one thing that the last several decades have taught us, it’s that tech companies do not exist for the benefit of everyday people. Despite what the heartwarming Superbowl ads may have you believe, tech companies exist for the pleasure and benefit of venture capitalist investors. There are indeed companies that are not beholden to the interests of VCs, but they’re…
One of my favorite things about technology is seeing how it evolves over time and how we adapt to the changes it brings. In the 90’s, digital documents were largely stored locally on people’s computers. This was delightfully simple, but if there was a hardware failure or software bug, the document was gone forever. In the 2000’s, we got cloud-based applications like Google Docs.…
Good software doesn’t die. Great software can’t be taken away. Much like a cool URI, software is only relevant so long as it’s available for use. Unfortunately, software is trending towards a fragile design: The Cloud. If you’re a Cloud Architect and reading this, relax. This isn’t a condemnation of your work. Cloud-based architecture has many benefits and there is a…
I love PWA technology. I think it’s the most powerful and empowering technology that has come along since the creation of the internet. And it’s never going to succeed. Why is this? How could a great technology utterly fail to make meaningful market share inroads? Let’s explore why PWAs are awesome, and why nobody cares. User-centric design Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are…
For at least the fourth time in my career, I am starting a dev blog. Surely, thoughts as original and provocative as mine must be shared with the the world1, so here they are. After all, are you even an open source developer if you don’t make the occasional rambling screed on the internet? The first time I tried this, I used Octopress. I really enjoyed the Git and Markdown-driven nature of…