Exceptions make it harder to compose robust systems. Great systems are composable which feels like building with legos. Exceptions are like legos that sometimes pop adjacent legos out of the structure. IRL you would toss those legos for being so annoying to work with.

Overview of my self host infra: * Servers: Hetzner * Setup: Ansible * App deploys: GH actions to Nomad

Was trying to figure out why even simple web requests were taking ~150ms to complete for my sites and realized it's probably just physics. I'm running Hetzner and they have a greater / cheaper selection of servers in their Finland / Germany locations.

AI isn't perfect at coding but I've found it's good enough to encourage me to to take bigger leaps on projects as I know I'll have help debugging new / bespoke errors. This week I moved my selfhost infra from raw Ansible to Nomad. It would've taken longer (and maybe not be completed) w/o AI help.

Why I'm Moving my Blog from F# to C# hamy.xyz/blog/2025-11...

Uptime Kuma was way easier to setup than I expected. Now have periodic healthchecks for my sites with notifications going out to a personal discord server.

It feels like there's a gap between Kamal and Nomad/k8s. I want an easy, declarative IaC for spinning up apps (Kamal) but I want this to work for managing my whole server topology (k8s). Q: Is there a Kamal that configures servers to apps?

How I use AI for coding: - Research coding topics - Fast prototyping / implementation for small, well-scoped tasks - Quick first pass reviews hamy.xyz/blog/2025-10...

Coolify is a solid technology but it definitely has some dependency risk. There's money coming in and incentive to keep the lights on but only a small team to do so. It's very possible that in 5 years that team will disband and the tech will not be maintained. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-08...

If F# (or any other niche language) wants to stay relevant in the age of LLMs, we need to see a lot more good, working code online. Strong types are good for adding guardrails to AI-gen code but training data seems to be the biggest differentiator in quality. More code, more data, more quality.

Reason #4 F# Sucks: C# steals F# features 10 years later C# now has: * Immutable records * Pattern matching * Discriminated unions * Pipes * Null safety And I'm happy for them! A little slow but hey they did it. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-06... #fsharp

Some ways Notion is better than Obsidian: - Good out of the box, Obsidian requires customization to be good - Better collaboration features - Better sync, esp for mobile Why I'm Moving my Personal Notes from Notion to Obsidian - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

I've been reading a lot of comments to the tune of "HTMX is dead". My response is ideally yes but currently no. More in: Is HTMX Dying? hamy.xyz/blog/2025-04...

AI is here to stay and will likely get much better in the coming months and years. As they say, this is the worst it will ever be. The pragmatic strategy is not to ignore it but to figure out how to leverage it to improve your own craft.

Notion Data Loss + Privacy - Should you be worried about losing or leaking your notes? hamy.xyz/blog/2025-11...

Believe it or not, you should avoid sitting like a shrimp for hours on end. It will cause excess stress on various parts of your body leading to chronic pain long-term. Here's how to setup a more ergonomic desk - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

PSA: You can create draft PRs with Codex (OpenAI's browser-based coding agent) by clicking the dropdown next to `Create PR` This is a good idea as most AI outputs could use another pass of review / refinements before they're ready to be reviewed by anyone else.

Why I'm Moving Back to Notion from Obsidian for Personal Notes hamy.xyz/blog/2025-11...

I hear a lot of grumblings that code review is a waste of time. IMO it's one of the best ROI processes for building alignment and sharing knowledge. It may take some extra time in the short term but it saves a lot of rework long-term.

Exceptions typically take a copy of the stack trace and (if thrown) roll up the callstack to find the next try/catch. This is useful for debugging when unexpected things happen. However it is super costly if all you're going to do is catch it and do manual recovery.

I like Obsidian for note taking but its sync is rarely allowed by company IT. So I typically just backup the Vault folders to whatever file storage system is approved by IT. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

Stacked commits in git are basically just single commit branches. Instead of adding a new commit on a branch to change it, you just amend the existing commit. What Are Stacked Commits and Why Should You Use Them? - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-07...

The Four Pillars of Career Growth: - Technical Skill: Your chosen craft. - Project Execution: Getting things done. - Product Thinking: Setting direction, impact for the business. - People Skills: How you collaborate.

One of the best strategies I've found for avoiding doom scrolling is to time block my calendar. I found my scrolling habit would typically kick in whenever I had random bits of free time. Time blocks have helped ensure more time in my day has a specific purpose.

How I Actually Code with AI hamy.xyz/blog/2025-10...

Coolify works great for app configurations but doesn't help much for server / platform configs. That's largely by design but it means that you have to build a way to handle server configurations - especially if you're configuring across multiple servers. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-08...

PSA: Eight Sleep temperature changes may be waking you up. I've been waking up in the middle of the night the past couple weeks so tried turning off all the temp changes in Eight Sleep. Since then I've been sleeping the whole night. Worth double checking your settings. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-10...

Strong, expressive types removes the need for many kinds of parameterized tests. Instead the compiler works as the test - if it doesn't conform to the definition, the code won't even compile. Reason #5 F# sucks: Your buggy code won't even compile hamy.xyz/blog/2025-06... #fsharp

Some ways Obsidian is better than Notion: - Local and lightweight - just markdown files - I control the data - can backup how I want - Highly customizable - HTML / CSS / JS Why I'm Moving my Personal Notes from Notion to Obsidian - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

Another benefit I've noticed from quitting coffee: I tend to bounce back faster after a night or two of bad sleep. Less zombie in mornings and can get through full day with decent energy. Useful if you tend to get woken up in the middle of the night. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-10...

To code with AI effectively, you need to take an active role: * Plan your project beforehand * Build one small feature at a time * Understand your system as you build Don't vibe code, vibe engineer.

I've worked as a software engineer for 8 years and spent considerable time, effort, and money making my WFH desk setup ergonomic. My best advice is: * Rule of 90 - Everything at right angles * Static Rule - Move as little as possible for common operations

Vibe Engineering > Vibe Coding hamy.xyz/blog/2025-07...

You should always review your AI's code before creating a PR in the same way that you should always review your own code before creating a PR. Don't send out a rough draft, send out a first draft. It saves everyone time.

Exceptions use a different control flow than basically any other programming language feature. They are glorified goto statements that bypass everything except for try/catch blocks callers _may_ have implemented. This makes systems harder to reason about and fail gracefully with.

How to use Obsidian Sync at Work (without breaking the rules) hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

Where feature branches attempt to land a full feature all at once, stacked commits aim to land atomic, logical units of change one at a time. This helps with: * Avoiding merge conflicts * Easier, faster reviews * Test in prod early * Higher confidence in code change

Project checkpoints keep humans and AI on track * RFCs - describing problem, context, solution, and milestones * A task description - describing context and todos * A task tracker - so the AI can keep notes and update todos

The Four Pillars of Career Growth for Software Engineers hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

I time block access to scrolling social media apps to limit their distractions * 0000-1800 - No scrolling socials * 1800-0000 - Can access I currently use the Stayfocusd Chrome extensions to limit time on my computer and the built-in work mode on my Android phone.

Password managers help you remember strong passwords which prevents simple brute force / reuse hacks. But they also prevent phishing attacks. You'll be so used to autofill that you'll wonder why it's not working - hopefully pausing enough to realize it's not the real site / url.

The primary reason I'm moving off Coolify is to get Infrastructure as Code. If it works today, it should work next week / month / year as well. hamy.xyz/blog/2025-08...

Interesting data: How people use ChatGPT. I personally use AI most for: - Information search - How tos / debugging - Coding references / generation Sometimes images.

After using F# for awhile, raw null / undefined handling feels icky - especially if the nulls are implicit. Option = Some | None feels much better and forces you to handle each case. Reason #6 F# Sucks: Nulls haunt you hamy.xyz/blog/2025-06... #fsharp

Why I'm Moving my Personal Notes from Notion to Obsidian hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

AI is like a power tool. * Wielded strategically - large efficiency improvements * Wielded poorly - Might lose a hand To get the most use out of AI, take an active role. Don't vibe code, power code.

I generally like formatting my PR titles like this: [WORKSTREAM][TASKID] TYPE: CHANGE An example might be: [BLOG][HAM-101] Feature: Provide an example of good PR titles How to write good PR titles - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-08...

How to Setup an Ergonomic Workstation - More productivity, less back / neck / wrist pain hamy.xyz/blog/2025-09...

Will removing Python's GIL make it substantially faster? For well-designed parallel workloads: yes. For most general purpose single-threaded workloads: No and in many cases these get SLOWER.

My office goals: * Simple - To setup, change, and replace * Productive - Helps me achieve my goals * Ergonomic - So I can do this long-term My Multi-Computer WFH Productivity Desk Setup as a Software Engineer and YouTuber - hamy.xyz/blog/2025-05...