What if the best architecture isn't the most scalable, flexible, or future-proof one? 🤔 @tastapod.com argues for building the Best Simple System for Now—and avoiding the trap of solving problems you don't have yet. Watch: youtu.be/u4Cv65F9DcY?...

'I want a new playlist please. I'm not in any hurry for it, but for pity's sake don't put any of that terrible prog rock on it like you did last time.' 'Sure thing, I hear you, no Rush.'

If I had a trillion dollars [ if I had a trillion dollars ] I'd buy you a right-wing riot [ but not a real right-wing riot, 'cause that's cruel ]

@sarahjwells.bsky.social, Patrick Kua and @tastapod.com od.com discuss what engineering leadership looks like when uncertainty becomes the norm rather than the exception. 🎧 gotopia.tech/podcast

- My girlfriend loves football! - Wow, she sounds like a keeper - No, she plays midfield - Well my girlfriend works at the zoo - She definitely sounds like a keeper! - No, she does event management - My girlfriend looks after bees ...

If a vegan crossfit fan is using Claude to write Rust, which thing do they tell you first?

beyoncé: if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it sauron: brb

Public Service Announcement: Inserting a pointless voice or chatbot between me and the human I want to talk to—who still works there but now only ever picks up the phone to frustrated and angry folks fed up with repeating themselves—is not an 'AI strategy'.

What if you think of your LLM as a proxy crowd-sourcer playing Family Fortunes? It makes a _lot_ more sense. You ask: > How can I get this image to sit in the middle of the page as I scroll? Claude's training data says: > We asked 100 web developers how they would centre an image...

today's typo: toxenmaxxing

I feel like the last generation—DevOps into Continuous Delivery—was defined by Conway's Law, and this generation—AI tokenmaxxing and shoehorning—is defined by Goodhart's Law.

I will be teaching my two-day course, Practical Messaging, at NDC Oslo this year. I suspect it will be the only public presentation this year. It's two days.

There was a wonderful period of about 30 years between 'We will only ever need five or six computers' and 'We will only ever need five or six computers' that has been most of my working life. I hope with the shift to local AI models and the resurgence of on-prem, we get some of that back again.

indentical (adj): two lines in a Makefile that look the same but one uses a tab and the other has spaces.

Want to be more effective? Join @socratesuk.bsky.social Training Day (near London, June 18) to meet @emilybache.com for her session: “Legacy Code - Characterization Testing with Approvals”. 🛠️ Learn Approval testing to get control of legacy code! 🔗 socratesuk.org/training_day... (1/4)

Live from the Tavern Hall in Bellevue at the Party with Palermo for the MVP Summit - it's episode 2000 of .NET Rocks! Lots of stories from listeners and party attendees about their experiences with .NET and how the show has been a part of their story. Listen at www.dotnetrocks.com/details/2000

Compaction be like: 'what did I come into this room for again?'

I've been having some lovely chats with old and new clients recently about my coaching work. One of the things that came up was how I deeply sucked at letting people know what I did. A first attempt at doing a better job of that is now at quietstars.com/coaching Feedback welcome :-)

Proposal that Brits start celebrating American Independence Day on 7 April.

Spec-driven development is back. But not how you think. Gojko Adzic & @tastapod.com debate custom linting rules, AI guardrails, and why "automation makes things faster — not better." Enjoy 40 minutes of signal. 🔥 youtu.be/6mLYZF97oaU?... #BDD #SoftwareCraft #Linting

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

We completed the half marathon! And we beat our target time. And we didn't die (yet)! Please throw some appreciative pennies at the donate button if you haven't already

I wrote a blog post! Just a quick update on what I'm up to these days, but at least I'm blogging again trishagee.com/2026/04/09/t... #techlayoff #layoff

TIL: #VSCode source control diff tool shows side-by-side 'before' and 'after' #Excalidraw diagrams. That's just gorgeous.

Dave Farley announced as a keynote for this year's Lean Agile Scotland conference in Edinburgh - also announced as keynotes - Cat Swetel and Dan Vacanti: leanagile.scot/keynotes Full event programme coming soon...

PSA: Use @pnpm.io minimumReleaseAge. A simple way to make NPM supply chain attacks, like the one affecting the `axios` NPM package, more unlikely. maier.tech/notes/pnpm-m...

'#Claude is down' is the new '#GitHub is down' xkcd.com/303/ In other news, today I discovered there is no #xkcd comic number 404.

April Fools’ Day. The only real joke is waiting until you “feel ready” to speak. No one feels ready. They just decide their experience is worth sharing. Stop waiting. Step into the spotlight. Submit your JavaZone talk: 2026.javazone.no/speaker

Today's suggestion: start saying 'LinkedIn' like you would say 'rinky-dink'. No reason, just more fun. And #LinkedIn could use more fun.

Awks...

In a better timeline there would have been a collaboration between Florence Welch, Gladys Knight and Crystal Gayle called 'Florence, Knight and Gayle'

This is properly brilliant. CSS - no JavaScript - used to turn a regular <select> element into a Duck Hunt-type game where you choose an option by shooting at it.

In a better timeline there would be a collaboration between Guns n' Roses and Talking Heads called 'Slash and Byrne'.

One of Claude's euphemisms for 'working' is 'simmering'. I misread it as 'simpering' and thought, 'yep, that tracks.'

TIL: % cpdf -i input.pdf -hflip -o mirrored.pdf Horizontal flip of PDF slides so they work in a teleprompter screen.

Proposal to refer to AI-generated subtitles as 'closed craptions'

Writing the final chapter(s) of a book and found myself writing: ...an open source* alternative... * A form of free software that used to exist before the robots came

Evelyn van Kelle and I are on the train back from @amaconf.bsky.social, and we wanted to share something we promised during our talk. #DomainDrivenDesign #SoftwareArchitecture #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias #CollaborativeSoftwareDesign >>>

A healthy relationship between employer and employee should be mutually beneficial - so why is there such a power imbalance? Suzi Edwards-Alexander talks on RunAs Radio at www.runasradio.com/Shows/Show/1... about hiring and getting hired in 2026!

What you'll learn at AmA 2026 Next week. Final seats. AI: @kevlin.bsky.social , Birgitta Boeckeler Sociotechnical: @ewolff.com @settling-mud.bsky.social @tastapod.com Decisions: @kenny.weave-it.org , @eoinwoods.bsky.social pretix.eu/AmA/2026/

The cognitive dissonance between 'Your #genAI is smarter than a roomful of PhDs' and 'Your AI is like a junior developer so you have to treat it like a n00b' is just... painful. It is _so_ unlike a junior developer I don't even know where to start. Oh wait, yes I do, I feel a podcast coming on.

We are pleased to release `uk_address_matcher`, a free Python package for address matching and geocoding, developed by Tom Hepworth and me. The package has several aims: simplicity, speed and accuracy.

Ooh this is fun. Try putting an echo command in your .envrc files to act as a readme reminder when you cd into the directory. echo 'This is for custom commands. Remember to reload your shell if you change anything here.'

Smart people in the right environment move incredibly fast. Then they see how slow most places really are. As @tastapod.com puts it: great teams ruin you for other jobs.

"Clean Code" — a timeless truth or a myth we keep telling ourselves? @tastapod.com and me in conversation on the @modernswe.bsky.social channel discussing the origins, limitations and implications of clean code www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjW_...

Very inspiring keynote about the best simple system for now @jfokus.se anniversary edition! #evolving #system #architecture

If everything Rob Pike created vanished overnight, the Internet would stop working. If everything AI created vanished overnight, we’d all breathe a huge sigh of relief and get on with our lives.

Early Christmas present from me if you're reading this and you're a: - Senior web developer - In London - Really into books and libraries - Looking for work rn I am excited to inform you that the British Library is hiring a new head of web development ce0752li.webitrent.c...

I have a crazy idea for the RAM manufacturers (Samsung and SK hynix) that Sam Altman has done a deal with to take 40% of their output: Tell him to pay for it.

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