How I Developed a Muffin Recipe

If you like muffins and software, you are in the right place.

How I Plan Software Projects

I always ship multiple milestones. Too many projects fail to deliver because they are built from the ground up without proving value and testing the work.

Feeling Stuck at Work

During growth periods, I learn something new daily. Each line of code I write is thrilling, every project plan has a broad impact, and I receive positive feedback every minute. Plateaus come abruptly.

Weird LLM Apps

In the past few weeks, I've used Claude to make small apps that have sometimes been useful to me and other times just for fun. You can find the complete list of LLM-generated apps at weird.enumerator.dev. I don't really like any of these apps.

Ten Links from This Week

LLMs As a side note, I've called this category "AI" in the past. But most of these links are actually about LLMs, or predictive text thingamajigs that appear somewhat smart sometimes. I still see a future where my job changes dramatically because of LLMs, but I&

Ten Things I Read this Week

This week's post is a bit less organized because I was travelling this week. AI AI Codegen Workflow This is a great post outlining a workflow with prompts for using AI to write instructions for itself. Note that Harper switches models for different tasks. My LLM codegen workflow

Show Up With Questions

Curiosity is my brand word, apparently. And I stand by it. Without curiosity, our work falls apart, whether in person or remote.

Excellent Engineers

An excellent engineer cares about the business, gets the job done, and confidently makes good decisions without guidance.

Using the Wrong Language Model

In the image above (transcript below), I asked an LLM to "tell me a fun fact," it responded with a somewhat correct fact that was a bit mundane, perhaps because I know more about owls than this language model does. But this is a good example of understanding

Ten Things I Read This Week

Software Development Is Engineering Strategy Useful? There’s always a strategy, even if it isn’t written down. The single biggest act you can take to further strategy in your organization is to write down strategy so it can be debated, agreed upon, and explicitly evolved. Is engineering strategy useful?

The New Old Skills

AI hype has created plenty of fear about being replaced by robot overlords, which has made me ask myself: What are the essential, non-replaceable parts of our jobs?

Good Hacks

[A] “good hack” was some feat of technical virtuosity undertaken for pure pleasure rather than necessity, like programming a mainframe the size of a dozen refrigerators to play a song. ― Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes A good hack! This passage sent me down a rabbit hole of research on good hacks I

organizational culture

Problems that Matter

Problems that matter are problems business leaders care about. Learn what your business leaders care about and look at your work through their eyes.

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This Has Always Been the Job

AI is changing my job and yours, and it is a reflection of the failings of our socio-cultural and technical systems. These are two conclusions I've come to in my deep dive into AI developer tools in the past two weeks. And I'm not alone: * Test

reading-list

Things I Read This Week

On Engineering Chip Huyen on Pitfalls When Building Gen AI This is a great post if you're asking "should I use AI for that?" Use generative AI when you don't need generative AI This pitfall is so common when technologies are new. I love

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Misinformation and AI

Big surprise. AI is not neutral. Hyperallergic recently reported that DeepSeek refused to answer questions about Ai WeiWei. I've tried this myself with Ai WeiWei and Tank Man and DeepSeek at first suggested it couldn't help but with a few careful prompts it appeared to know

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Critical Thinking

I am beginning to think that the failings of AI are a reflection of the failings of our own socio-cultural systems. The paper linked below outlines critical thinking motivators and inhibitors when using AI. People are motivated to think critically when they desire to improve work quality, avoiding negative outcomes

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A Day in the Life of a Programmer in 2026

Working with AI will mean that we can focus on outcomes, systems design, and nuanced test cases,

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AI Will Change My Job and Yours

If you had asked me how AI has changed my work a few months ago, I would have said that I get a few tedious tasks done faster and use it for a bit of research, but my job hasn't changed much otherwise. In the past month, I

ai

How Do LLM-Suggested Edits Work in Text Editors

LLMs Need Context, Just Us Context. I need context to understand what you're talking about. Give me a one line Jira ticket and I'll spend the next half hour finding context and probably pestering you for more information. Once I have that, I'll probably

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My Distraction-free Work Setup

I have worked from home for most of my career and have gone through a few different work space setups to make the most comfortable, productive environment for myself. I am someone who finds office spaces incredibly distracting. They are useful for face-to-face conversations and collaboration, but when I need

tools

Samuel Johnson, the Unexpected Grandfather of LLMs

As many people have I've been trying out a handful of LLMs to assist with coding. I've found them very useful tackling mundane tasks that might otherwise take me a few minutes, or at times hours, to accomplish on my own This reminds me of a

organizational culture

Assumptions

As software developers it is our job to test our assumptions. So how do you go about knowing, testing, and rethinking them?

organizational culture

But First, Why?

In my last post, Strategy First, I explored the importance of having principles behind technical strategy. Starting with guiding principles is important, but team members can feel left adrift if they are only left with principles and no specific actions. Will Larson suggests: ...executives are generally directionally correct but specifically