Leave your ego at the door 🚪 Latest
Leave your ego at the door and become a better developer and teammate.
Blog
Things related to software development that I find interesting. I hope you will too. 🙂
I try to write new stuff once a week. For particular topics, browse my blog posts by tag.
December 2025
Run two instances from day one ✌️
Run two instances to reveal problems early and prevent costly rewrites later.
Upgrading legacy systems without losing your sanity 🤯
·9 mins
Strategies that I’ve found helpful when performing a major technology upgrade.
Write code that is easy to replace ✈️
To build a resilient system that survives, build it to be replaced gradually.
Leaving code messy is unprofessional 🧑🏫
A professional job is one that leaves the system ready for the next task.
November 2025
Good architecture depends on the context 🗺️
How you can make architectural decisions that truly matter.
Avoid AI code drift with small, well-defined steps 🐢
To prevent code drift you need to make AI take small, well-defined steps.
Are you using AI to generate instant legacy code? 🧑🚀
AI can accelerate development, but it doesn’t remove responsibility to understand the code.
Software architecture as a nautical chart 🧭
How architecture can guide teams with clarity without limiting freedom.
October 2025
Why ChatGPT feels smart but really isn't 🤖
Understanding the illusion of intelligence in large language models.
The dream of code that writes itself 🕯️
We try to bottle architectural intent, but the world’s messiness always seems to leak out.
Solution notes: stop repeating past mistakes 📝
Solution notes are short, searchable records of problems and their fixes.
Use simple words to let your ideas shine ✨
With clearer writing, readers are more likely to understand and remember your points.
September 2025
Allow yourself to fail 🌊
How i stopped worrying and learned to love failure (or at least learned to live with it).
Break down silos with a walking skeleton 💀
A walking skeleton forces developers to talk, aligning both code and teams from day one.
Purpose over urgency ❤️
I think a team with a sense of purpose works better than one with a sense of urgency.
August 2025
Writing good technical documentation 📝
A guide to writing technical documentation that is clear, informative, and fun!
Why divergent thinking leads to better software 💎
Discover how divergent thinking can open up better solutions and save you from wasted effort.
June 2025
Why developers are so difficult 🤬
When developers ask difficult questions it is often a sign that they care.
April 2025
Of course you can write a Python tutorial 🐍
There are perfectly valid reasons for why you would write something even if you don’t expect it to become a top result on Google.
March 2025
Today's perfection is tomorrow's junk 🗑️
“Perfection” is time-bound, contextual, and subjective. Don’t chase it, or you will end up wasting your time.
All systems eventually collapse ⛓️💥
Complexity will increase until overwhelming, but striving for simplicity can slow it down.
February 2025
Reduce new problems to known solutions 🔽
If you can make an unknown situation look like one you already know how to handle, you can apply a well-known solution.
Blog questions challenge 🙋♂️
My answers to the blog questions challenge that is making rounds on the Internet.
Your first idea is probably bad 👎
Software is an evolving entity, not a finished product. You need to edit your code to improve.
Give descriptive feedback 🗳️
Don’t be a backseat driver, trying to take over the PR through comments.
January 2025
Refactoring early returns to pattern matching 🔀
Early returns can be seen as a form of pattern matching.
Why I love Kotlin (on the backend) ❤️
I think Kotlin is a great language for backend development. But will it manage to stay relevant?
The secret of good programming 🕵
The secret of good programming is to strip every statement to its cleanest components.
My favorite interview questions 🧑💻
Here are my favorite technical questions to ask when interviewing software developers.
December 2024
Only use AI if you can verify its result 🐟
If you are not in a position to judge the result, consider not using AI, or ask for help.
Find three solutions 🔱
Challenge yourself to come up with at least three solutions to problems that you encounter.
Why use AI for Advent of Code? 🕯️
If you use AI to solve puzzles for you, you are kind of missing the point.
The power of collection pipelines 💪
An example of how collection pipelines can help solving an Advent of Code problem.
November 2024
Basic tools 🛠️
Beginners use basic tools due to lack of skill, while advanced developers chose them because they know they’re often enough.
October 2024
Depth-first development 📋
Follow the original task for as long as it takes to complete it. Keep a list of everything else.
September 2024
Barricade + choke point 🛡️
Two design patterns that I’ve found helpful when designing systems to deal with untrusted data.
August 2024
Algebraic data types 🧩
·14 mins
Compose types and use them to represent complex data in a clean and type safe way.
Intrinsic motivation 🔥
Is customer satisfaction or commercial success the ultimate measurement of the outcome of my work? Not for me.
My pre-commit routine ✅
Check code committed to version control for quality, and the code base will thank you.
July 2024
Same level of abstraction ⚖️
To make something easy to understand, its parts should be at the same level of abstraction.
Focused commits 🔍
If you don’t know what message to write, it was too long since you last committed.
Just close all issues 🗑️
Has the backlog become longer than you can finish within a reasonable time frame?
Don't forget to play 🏀
Developers sometimes underestimate the importance of doing things just for fun.
June 2024
Writing is thinking ✍️
Don’t use AI to write text for you, or you’ll lose the opportunity to sharpen your thinking.
Abstractions as communication 📣
Create abstractions to communicate intent to your fellow programmers.
Put uncertainty in a box 📦
I put stuff with too much uncertainty in a box and don’t think about it until I know more.
Local rules give global results ➡
It’s easy to think that large results require large changes. That is not necessarily true.
May 2024
There is no loop 🥄
Learn to move from imperative
while and for loops to declarative collection functions like map and filter.
April 2024
Constructors and creation methods 🏗️
Use creation methods when a constructor fails to fully capture the programmer’s intent.
Twelve-year-old blog posts 🕰️
I imported old posts from another blog of mine, surprised that they are still pretty good!
Why write unit tests? 🧪
·18 mins
A deep dive into unit testing looking to answer why, how much, and what.
Testable code is reusable code ♻️
Testability and reusability goes hand in hand. When you test a function, you run the code in another context than it was built for.
Remove temporal dependencies ⏰
How to avoid “temporal dependencies” where things must be done in a certain order.
AI is great for research 📖
Generative AI is bad at coming up with novel ideas, but really good remixing existing.
March 2024
Does this scale down? 📉
How come people never worry about whether technology scales down to a low number?
Kill two bugs with one type 🪲
An example of how just a little typing can help avoid several real-world problems.
Functional foundations ⚙️
·23 mins
A selection of functional programming concepts that I feel are helpful to all developers.
February 2024
I can be wrong 🤷
Even though you feel completely confident, there is always a slight chance you are wrong.
Will it be harder tomorrow? ⏳
A question which can help you both prioritize more effectively and design better systems.
Constraints are good 🔗
While it may sound counter-intuitive, creativity often benefits from constraints.
January 2024
Risk-driven development 🧨
Identify the parts of your project with highest risk, and make sure to look at them early.
If you can't explain it, you don't understand it 💡
Teaching is a great way to determine if you truly understand a subject.
Time to prove it 🏆
“If you are so smart, and know so much, show me what you have actually contributed!”
December 2023
Death by a thousand inconsistencies 💀
When you make an exception from a rule, you make the whole system harder to learn.
Generative AI as arbiter of "least astonishment" 🤖
Almost by definition, a suggestion by an LLM represents the least surprising solution.
September 2014
Convert guard clauses to value objects
How replacing validation functions with types can make your code safer and more expressive.
August 2012
See tests as living documentation
A few examples of how viewing tests as documentation can affect your test writing.