Blog

When should a manager step in?

March 17, 2026 - code

When and how to intervene as a manager

It's time to move your docs in the repo

March 13, 2026 - code

AI agents address the remaining concerns with having your documentation alongside your code in version control

Write and checkout the plan

January 8, 2026 - code

Why you should start your AI coding session with planning mode, and check out the resulting plan

A Python project checklist

January 28, 2021 - code

All the best practices for setting up a new app in Python

Senior engineers ship and uplift

October 19, 2020 - management

Senior engineers should be expected to ship business value and uplift others around them.

A functional style leads to simpler code

July 22, 2020 - code

Taking inspiration from FP patterns leads to simpler code, even in languages that don't fully support them.

Starting a new job as an engineering manager

January 7, 2020 - management

how should you onboard yourself as an engineering manager?

Test coverage only matters if it's at 100%

September 6, 2019 - code

All lines of code should be covered by a test or explicitly excluded from test coverage.

The great microservices migration

October 19, 2017 - code

How did Uber go from a 450,000 lines monolithic Python application to more than 1,000 microservices?

Negative feedback antipatterns

December 2, 2016 - management

Untargeted feedback. Things you can't impact. Things you didn't do. Unspecific feedback. Only positives. The feedback sandwich.

10 principles for good code

October 1, 2015 - code

Taking inspiration from Dieter Rams' ten principles for good design, here are the ten principles of good code.

Maslow's pyramid of code review

February 18, 2015 - code

Maslow's pyramid can help us think about what great code reviews look like.

Engineering managers’ priorities in a hyper-growth startup

March 2, 2014 - management

Grow the team. Maintain a vision. Manage projects. Organize. Code.

Learnings from six months as a first-time engineering manager

January 29, 2014 - management

It's demanding. Empathy is required. You should keep coding. It's easy to make a difference. You can and should disconnect. You will grow through mentoring and feedback. It's incredibly rewarding.

Code as Craft

September 19, 2013 - code

Let's take pride in our software engineering craft.

Resources to learn coding

September 9, 2013 - code

A list of resources to learn programming.

Code is not the end

August 16, 2013 - code

An engineer's job is not to write code - it is to solve business problems.

Using qcachegrind to visualize Python profiling data

May 22, 2013 - code

How to visualize your code's profile with qcachegrind.

Why I keep on using Vim instead of going back to TextMate

December 14, 2011 - code

Why taking the time to learn Vim is a smart investment.

Articles from Joel Spolsky about functional specifications

November 9, 2011 - code

Some quotable quotes about functional specs.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and do not necessarily reflect (past or present) employers' opinion.