Just got an email from GitHub. Apparently a release failed. I get the feeling that something serious messed up when the release started... 30 days ago. According to the log, the release action ran for 30 days before failing. That can't be right. And should I expect a massive bill at somepoint?

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: New blog post: Mechanical Sympathy; The Case for Giving Engineers Time to Optimise 🎯 This one's for the people who decide whether their engineers get that time. 🔗

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: 💭 There's a belief in tech that the best developers don't need process; they just 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸. Atul Gawande calls this out. Real expertise isn't perfect memory. It's knowing which mistakes are most likely and building systems to prevent them.

Final day of the trade mission: Hong Kong Science and Technology Park this morning, then a sunset networking cruise to close the week. It's been an intensive, valuable week.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: 🎧 New episode of The Modern .NET Show! Joydip Kanjilal joins me to talk GitHub Copilot: what it is, what it isn't, and how to get the most from it.

Look at what I get to do! I was just at the British Consulate in Hong Kong as part of a trade mission.

Shenzhen today: a company visit to BYD as part of the Chamber trade mission. Whatever your view on the competitive landscape, the pace of innovation here is remarkable. Seeing it first-hand changes your perspective as a technologist. Hong Kong next.

Claude Code no longer available on @anthropic.com's Pro plan it seems. claude.com/pricing

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: New CPD blog post: what The Checklist Manifesto teaches us about managing complexity in software teams 🎯 🔗

I love how literal some Chinese to English translations are. Left to right, this reads: - blade - fork (as in "fork in the road") - ladle Those are just one of many ways to read these characters, but the closest to their stated English meanings.

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: Day one in Guangzhou on the trade mission with the West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce 🎯 Meetings today with the British Chamber of Commerce South China, British Consulate General, and a Sinoport event.

Look at what I get to do! Today I was at an event celebrating and announcing the opening of a collaboration between Sinoport and Teeside Airport, in Guangzhou, China.

⚠️ Most teams don't set out to become manager-heavy. It happens gradually: a compliance need here, a growth phase there. I wrote a three-part series on spotting the pattern and fixing it. Part 3 covers the practical steps. 💭 Has your team ever had more people overseeing work than doing it?

Oh hey, they read out my tip. I genuinely do this all the time.

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: 💭 One idea from my latest blog post that gets overlooked: fractional leadership. Not every growing company needs a full-time CTO. 2–4 days a month of strategic guidance can fill the gap without adding permanent management overhead.

Oh honey no. That's not how to make anything secure. EU Age Verification app hacked in under 2 minutes xcancel.com/Paul_Reviews...

S08E17 - Context Is Everything: Getting the Most from GitHub Copilot with Joydip Kanjilal Software architect and Microsoft MVP Joydip Kanjilal joins Jamie to discuss GitHub Copilot and AI-assisted development — covering what Copilot actually is, why context is everything when prompting it, and th

Life is short, and stuff like this can happen. Ensure you have your priorities straight folks. And I wish Kent Beck all the best. He's had a monumental impact on the industry. tidyfirst.substack.com/p/parkinsons

Andy Clark dives into .NET nanoFramework: C# on tiny boards, hardware abstractions, custom fonts, and the joy of building under constraints. If you’ve ever wanted to blend IoT tinkering with real .NET skills, this episode is a gem. 🎧 buff.ly/xovw3ee

Remember folks, you have 1 year until you're no longer supported. Plan your upgrade now.

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: 🎧 New episode of The Modern .NET Show! Andy Clark joins me to talk about .NET nanoFramework: C# on microcontrollers.

Thank goodness. This has needed to happen for a very long time, and will send a very clear message to the websites that do this. developers.google.com/search/blog/...

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭: Part 3 of my "Too Many Waiters, Not Enough Cooks" series is live 🎯 This one's all about practical steps: what do you actually do when your software team has too many managers? 🔗

I honestly don't understand how folks are using their entire quote of tokens so quickly with Claude Code. I've been using it on a bunch of projects for a while and haven't managed to hit the quota yet. Sometimes multiple agents, multiple projects, and a Claude.AI conversation simultaneously.

Post 1/3: 💭 Something I've been thinking about this week: the best engineers I know regularly do something completely outside their usual work. Embedded systems, music, woodworking; something with different constraints.

Starting a new hobby soon. Can you tell what it is? I won't be taking it super seriously though. I'll be using it as a way to get out and about more.

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Post 1/4: New episode of The Modern .NET Show is out! Andy Clark joined me to talk about .NET nanoFramework; writing C# for microcontrollers with 512KB of RAM. It's a great one. 🎯

If you, your company, or clients are using ASP. NET Core 2.3,the timer has started. You have 12 months to upgrade. devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspne... #dotnet

With the current pushback against LLM-written code (from folks as high up in our industry as ThoughtWorks, no less) about "but what about the architecture?" I feel like this is even more important. Don't ship crap, for sure. But also, we need to focus on where the value is to be found.

Post 1/2: 💭 Something I keep coming back to from the "Kill It With Fire" re-read: users don't care how elegant your architecture is. They care whether it works, and whether it's fast enough not to frustrate them.

Plans are not roadmaps; they are sea charts. Chart your current position, your destination, and the known hazards; the route changes with the wind. Plans are experiments that need to be validated as they unfold. Plans are questions, not answers.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No I'm thinking what I'm thinking. So you're not what I'm thinking? No, 'cos you're thinking that I'm thinking what you're thinking. Classic Flight of the Concords.

Post 1/4: 💭 Legacy modernisation is hard; not because the technical problems are unsolvable, but because getting buy-in, resources, and momentum is where most efforts fail. New CPD post is out.

My 3d printed MVP dude thinks that the shelf is getting a little crowded. Also, my photography "skills" are the worst.

I genuinely don't create the podcast to make money, and it's kind of a good thing really 😅 In all seriousness, I fully appreciate anyone who wants to shared their hard earned money to support the show, but I don't expect it. I'm genuinely thankful for everyone.

Happy Ēostre! Prints of this comic (and others) available in my shop - link in bio

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭/𝟯: 💭 After a week back from #MVPSummit , one thing keeps coming back to me: the organisations doing the best work aren't always the ones with the biggest teams.

Look at how beautiful our planet is. And the Northern Lights making an appearance in tbe upper right, too. www.nasa.gov/image-detail...

We will be removing Microsoft Testing Platform v1 support from the next major release, moving to v2 as the default. We will still support your ability to choose to disable MTP as well. #DotNet #UnitTest

S08E16 - IoT and .NET nanoFramwork: Andy Clark on Building Beyond the Limits In this episode of The Modern .NET Show, Jamie Taylor chats with Andy Clark about .NET nanoFramework and the exciting possibilities of embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT). Andy shares his experiences buildi

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭/𝟰: New episode of The Modern .NET Show is out! @xenoprimate.bsky.social joined me to talk about TinyFFR; a cross-platform .NET library for real-time 3D rendering. It's a great one.🎯

I'm wondering whether, with a global internet, the sheer amount of "journalism" (quotes very intentional), and how fast a story can get around the world, whether corporations should blanket ban public announcements on April 1st.

From YAML Chaos to C# Clarity: Mattias Karlsson on Cake Build hubs.li/Q048LRZG0 @devlead.se #dotnet

Ever wish you could skip the engine bloat and just render the thing? TinyFFR gives .NET devs a fast path from blank project to real‑time 3D — with documentation that’s genuinely delightful. Ben Bowen tells the story behind it: buff.ly/3tBFlwa

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭/𝟰: 💭 How much of your developers' time goes on meetings vs. actual development work? Healthy teams typically keep it to 20–30%. Above 40%? Worth investigating.

This! Mark your calendars, friends!

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭/𝟯: Just landed back from #MVPSummit 2026 in Redmond. Three days with brilliant people from across the Microsoft MVP community. Genuinely re-energised. #MVPBuzz

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟭 Sunday recap: this week's secure coding and 3D rendering content in one thread 🧵 From fundamental security principles to accessible 3D development. Here's everything if you missed it or want it consolidated: