Ryan Frantz
Own It You need to own your operations. Now. In Just Buy it Already I made the claim that it nearly always makes sense for companies to buy, rather than build, solutions that support their products. For personal projects, this can also be true. I think that still holds, but I also stated that things change. Sometimes the catalyst for reconsidering those purchases is a need to reduce expenses.…
Lots of articles have been written about generative AI, and this is one of them. I started scribbling this short post as a bit of prediction, but I think instead I’ll offer it as a small hope: the increased use of generative AI will lead folks to reevaluate what trust, scholarship, and expertise look like. Before Google started providing AI-driven search results, I didn’t fully trust the top 3…
Legacy systems make new development possible. Much like the decomposition of this year’s generation of plants will support next year’s growth, our experiences with existing systems fuel greenfield projects we’ll take on in the future. What you know now is foundational to what you create later. Crucially, operating these systems encourages us to consider how we deliver care for them because like…
Senior engineers don’t grow on trees, so they say. That is, you can’t simply walk outside and pluck one from a low-hanging branch and reap the benefits of all that experience. Except, they do. That is, if you consider that trees take years, decades even, to mature and you think of a tree as an organization that fosters an engineer’s growth over time. Senior engineers come from somewhere , but not…
AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), are not a replacement for understanding or experience. Imagine you ask your favorite LLM for a set of recipes that adhere to a certain theme, say, Thai cuisine. You may receive a collection of instructions, including the necessary ingredients and steps to prepare them, but this is not enough to prepare the dishes adequately. So many important answers…
In bed Throw the covers on your head You pretend like you are dead But I know it The rhythm is gonna get you! Gloria Estefan, Rhythm is Gonna Get You It’s Friday. The week is winding down. We order pizza and wings and fries. We tune in to some trash TV and tune out from the world for a few hours. We do this every week. It’s our rhythm. Except this week. For the past 7 days, a few of us have been…
I take notes daily. Copious notes. All the notes. Why? The obvious answer is “So I don’t forget.” I began taking notes in earnest after my first annual job review, where neither I, nor my manager, could recall all the important work I had done. I felt like I had missed an opportunity to show off my accomplishments and I never wanted that to happen again. Really, though, I take notes so that I…
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1831 edition)
Recognizing hazard and successfully manipulating system operations to remain inside the tolerable performance boundaries requires intimate contact with failure. Dr. Richard Cook, How Complex Systems Fail Change management procedures are borne from a fear of change. The controls related to this “management” afford an avoidance of understanding proposed changes, bolstering that fear. As a group…
I used to agree that every line of code is a liability. After reflecting on this, I see software less as a liability and more a responsibility. Meaning, care is required. At all stages of software’s lifecycle. We care as we develop, care as we operate and scale, and care as we deprecate. Good care requires lots of resources.