Archive

Essays

A chronological list of writing on software, leadership, the web, and a few field notes in between.

  1. Published 19th of Mar 2026

    Developing Good Taste

    Having a taste for what's good matters now more than it ever has. The incredible thing is that we can develop good taste.

  2. Published 11th of Mar 2026

    My Last Day at Disney

    This ends an 7 year chapter of my life which I'll really miss. But I'm also excited about what's next.

  3. Published 17th of Feb 2026

    The Invariants of Great Work

    The characteristics, behaviors, and mental models which need to be held constant to be able to do our best work.

  4. Published 18th of Aug 2025

    Good takes effort

    In software there is incidental work and inherent work. We adopt tools to do the incidental work so we can focus our creativity on the inherent complexity, which is where the value is.

  5. Published 16th of Aug 2025

    Woz is the happiest person ever

    Someone commented on Slashdot that Steve Wozniak was a fool for selling and giving away most of his shares in Apple. Woz replied with this gem.

  6. Published 24th of May 2025

    How to build a great software engineering team.

    Great teams build great software.

  7. Published 18th of Jul 2024

    Make Your Own Luck

    Luck plays a role in our successes and failures. But, we can take deliberate action to make ourselves a target for good luck.

  8. Published 9th of Feb 2023

    The Vintage Software Engineer

    I tend to downplay new things in software which people are generally excited about. Perhaps unfairly.

  9. Published 23rd of Feb 2018

    My Gear for a Winter Great Range Traverse

    What I learned during preparation, training, and practice for the Adirondack Great Range Traverse.

  10. Published 20th of Feb 2018

    Winter Traverse of the Adirondack Great Range

    Testing the limits of moving quickly over the rugged Adirondack wilderness in the Winter. I learned a lot about myself and the mountains in the process.

  11. Published 22nd of Aug 2016

    Solve Hard Problems

    There is a reluctance work on valuable problems in software because of a bias toward the 'easily' scalable ones.