"I hate planning meetings!" Maybe. Maybe it would help if you saw people actually _planning_: - changing the plan to reflect changing reality - taking our anxiety seriously about missing deadlines - figuring out what to say "No" to, then actually saying it What do you think?

Glow Sticks Are Cheap On Amazon #ExcellentTourName /cc @kathleenmadigan.bsky.social

A programmer's act of love: documenting and reporting an apparent defect in painstaking detail, then removing as many superfluous words as possible.

I highly _highly_ recommend this interview. It's long. Very long. Feature-film length. Even so, I love Dr Hassan's emphasis on what works when trying to help folks out of harmful beliefs, rather than what makes one feel superior over them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ulv...

Rudimentary TDD in #jq/#jaq: 1. Choose an input; make a text file for it. 2. Figure out the expected output; make a text file for it. 3. `diff expected.txt =(cat input.txt | jaq -L "lib" 'main_filter')` It seems like real work to run multiple tests together, but this is a start.

I'm _trying_ to trust the process, but I haven't yet figured out how to get away from investing myself in the results. substack.com/@jbrains/not...

What if I told you that we could turn deadlines into act of love? Stop looking at me like that. blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/de...

Unfortunate pattern in business: 1. Business struggles with cash. 2. Business makes decisions that alienate regular customers. 3. Regular customers have fewer options, so they stay, but they are ready to go at a moment's notice. 4. Customers stay, so business concludes "nothing wrong".

When I began practising #GTD I thought I needed to get more done in less time. As I learned more from the system, I realized that I was already trying to do too much and I needed to make more space to do less. That's the real wisdom I see in GTD.

Compassion fatigue means I forgive myself for doing this every so often, but only a few minutes, then it's back to work.

I am surprised to learn that some folks struggle with _Getting Things Done_ because of its "emphasis on multitasking". I think the book and the system say the exact opposite. [more to follow]

Have you tried #GTD and failed? or even struggled? Do you "start again" every few months or once a year? Does it never seem to stick? What's going on for you? I'd like to help. Reply or send me a message privately at tell.jbrains.ca.

What are the Cool Kids using these days to prepare slides for a conference talk on Linux? Interesting and offbeat options considered.

Trump convinced gullible Congress people who don’t know how software works to yoink TikTok & hand it to one of his billionaire donors. Now the new TikTok ToS say they will tell the government users’ citizenship & transgender status if it asks. We have less privacy today than we did yesterday.

Yes, and... ...I also consider interesting trades. How many Rainsbergers do you need? (Hint: all.)

The part of the team that worked full-time under The Astro Technology company did join Cloudflare -- and we are all happy for them! But, the overall Astro team is bigger: some of us worked as contractors or voluntarily, and currently depend on the very hard-to-get OSS sponsorships.

There are some great people, @yanthomas.dev included, looking for their next adventure! Oh hey, and me included, too! I'm not in a rush, but keeping my eye out for the right opportunity in docs or community leadership. If you've liked using or contributing to Astro, maybe part of that came from me!

When one part of a function is not changing while you're repeatedly changing another part, this is a signal to consider breaking that function into two pieces: the stable part and the unstable part. This isn't a law, but merely a helpful guideline. #EvolutionaryDesign

"an extraordinarily interesting video that touches on a load of great topics" No, really! Someone just wrote this comment about my conversation with Marco. This gives you an idea what it would be like to work with me. What do you think?

fivepinbowling.substack.com/p/towards-tr... #5pinbowling

There is no boolean so simple that I won't get it wrong at least once in the space of a few hours of programming. Therefore, I work in tiny steps and lean on tests.

Even when it's not an industrial-strength "real-life" project situation, discussions of testing strategy are quickly transformed into discussions of interpersonal conflict and individual emotional turmoil. And that's why you need an adviser like me: help navigating the hard parts. ;)

This emerged during Office Hours Chat! today. (tiny 🧵.) Work describes the tasks we do and why we do them, but Job is only a mechanism to exchange tasks/time/energy for money. Sometimes we have the opportunity to do Work at Job and we often feel happier when we do this.

@kathleenmadigan.bsky.social I propose that you start a Patreon with just one subscriber tier called "Termite". I imagine many folks would be happy to give you $5/month.

Someone contacted me today to ask me about my approach to teamwork for "Agile groups", but left a fake email address, so I don't get to answer them. What a pity. I think I could have enjoyed that conversation.

Would you like results without blame in 2026? Are you tired of being told you're doing it wrong? experience.jbrains.ca

Software design techniques represent, at their core, a guess about what a hypothetical future reader will understand more with a lower investment in effort, time, and money. I consider "guess" the key word of that claim. What makes you guess more accurately? Experience, knowing the audience, ...

Designing software means forever balancing two opposing consequences of the limits of working memory: - wanting conciseness and relying more on tacit knowledge to make writing code feel easier - wanting clarity and relying less on tacit knowledge to make understanding code feel easier No escape.

Something something great minds thinking alike... #refactoring #evolutionarydesign Different articulations of a mental model will click with different people, but those models tend to be much more alike than they are different. :)

I've been focusing a lot recently on refactoring. Simultaneously one of the most valuable and rarest developer skills. In this post, I talk about the different levels of refactoring: * Primitive (the basic "moves") * Tactical * Strategic codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/r...

Apparently they liked it enough for us to do it again. We are Refactoring Astro for at least two hours next week, live and in public. Join us! dateful.com/eventlink/32...

🧵 As we figure out what role LLMs and Gen AI systems will play in developing software, I await with interest actual experience reports, such as this one: (> next)

Sometimes we struggle getting buy-in from others about improving our software designs. I think I know one of the ways that happens: blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/a-...

Vague musings about software design in the age of Generative AI. At least it's relatively short: blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/in...

How's this for fortunate timing?! Just after writing a thread about the "ask your programmers!" strategy from _Frictionless_ (thread linked), I read the following in one of those email newsletters that we all subscribe to and never read. (next post) bsky.app/profile/jbra...

On the one hand, it amazes me that this very simple and obvious strategy isn't the first thing that executives think of when they wonder how to improve results in their software development groups. On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me at all that a person would shy away from it.

I'm doing some refactoring/adding tests in public on an Open Source project on December 2, in case you'd like to join us: discord.gg/astro-lounge...

If you do the Saff Squeeze and you _don't_ finish by laughing out loud at your own mistake, then did you really Squeeze? 🤔

Does this sound like you? Evolutionary Design/TDD has, for me, been an adaptive response to uncertainty (even anxiety!) I have felt while trying to write software.

I'm looking for a client interested in getting help to simply think more clearly for an experimental 3-month program. What could you do with weekly conversations with a wise, caring partner, whose primary concern was helping you make sense of your world?

How can writing things down in an Inbox be so powerful? blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/bl...

I try not to be quite so blunt about this these days, but I stand by the overall message: you have probably been trying to go too fast. And I get it. No blame, really! If you don't have at least one impatient customer, then you have a hobby and not a business, right? :shrug:

I have a new challenge for 2026 and I have spent approximately 20 minutes on it so far. This resource, I presume, is going to help me. dexonline.ro

Before you react to this story one way or the other, please listen to the podcast I've shared. Even if just in the background. It quite literally the least you can do. www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-p...

Well, my newest Master Class was a hit. As it is with my live work with programmers, we start with all the technical issues, then pivot hard in the last 30% to the deeper interpersonal problems. codecamp.ro/masterclasse...

"Yes, but we don't live in Qazaqstan, we live in Königswiesen!"

I formally submit my application for the role of CEO of #HTMX @htmx.bsky.social @htmx.org 🤷

The limit of making prompt libraries more precise is a programming language.

A telling of the story of how Carl Sagan tried to encourage young people to learn more about critical thinking. youtu.be/-Pc3IuVNuO0 #codecamp