All posts

350 daily notes, newest first.

2026-08-15 🏷️ IDs are not about details
2026-08-10 🧱 The hardest things
2026-08-05 🧹 zephyr-snmp v0.1.0 - a huge cleanup!
2026-08-04 🚣 Rowing the race you need at the end
2026-08-03 🛰️ Simple IoT now processes GPS data
2026-07-30 🧊 Why small teams have to be good at borrowing
2026-07-29 ⚖️ Exercise: Build vs Borrow
2026-07-28 📈 Do schedule estimates get more or less confident over time?
2026-07-27 🚧 Gatekeepers are ineffective
2026-07-24 ✉️ Drafting emails in Markdown
2026-07-23 🛣️ The two ditches
2026-07-22 🚀 Accelerating or Decelerating?
2026-07-21 🧩 From PCB change to mechanical model in one script
2026-07-20 📥 Email is not a workflow
2026-07-15 🔌 GitPLM: An easy way to manage your KiCad library using CSV files in Git
2026-07-14 🧊 Web application architecture
2026-07-09 🔩 Generating Mechanical Models with Claude Code
2026-04-22 🪑 The missing leg of reliability
2026-04-16 💻 Why the terminal still matters
2026-04-14 📧 How to solve the email problem?
2026-04-13 📝 You can't improve an email
2026-04-07 🛠️ Tools or Processes?
2026-04-02 🛩️ Why did the Wright Brothers succeed?
2026-04-01 🔧 What has changed around edge build systems?
2026-03-30 🔧 Why Go Works Well for Building CLIs
2026-03-26 🔌 API + CLI + Skills = the Future of AI Agents
2026-03-25 ❓ Better questions get better answers
2026-03-24 🏞️ Communicating Status Without Demanding Attention
2026-03-20 🤝 How to manage up
2026-03-19 👥 The release is a language everyone understands
2026-03-18 📦 What is a release used for?
2026-03-17 ⚡ The essence of shipping faster
2026-03-13 🔀 What is the difference between MVP and Release First?
2026-03-12 ✅ Each release is 100% done
2026-03-11 💡 A Simple Example
2026-03-10 🏷️ The simple approach to versioning
2026-03-09 📦 The bare minimum to call something a release
2026-03-06 ❓ Release Questions
2026-03-05 🤔 Two types of unknowns
2026-03-04 🧊 The hardest thing to manage
2026-03-03 🎉 The BIG 1.0 Release
2026-03-02 ❓ What is the difference between "releasing" and "shipping"?
2026-02-27 🚨 Problems with not Releasing First
2026-02-25 🌅 Why optimizing the user release experience early is so important
2026-02-24 🔵 The Big Blue Button
2026-02-23 🧠 The Human Factors
2026-02-20 ☝️ What do we mean by "First"?
2026-02-18 🟢 What is in the Big Green Button?
2026-02-17 🟢 The Big Green Button
2026-02-16 🔄 The release circle
2026-02-11 🧩 Why things fall apart at the end
2026-02-10 🪞 The illusion of project meta-data
2026-02-09 🚢 What is the #1 problem in product development?
2026-02-04 📦 More definitions of a release
2026-02-03 🛠️ Do things that don't scale
2026-02-02 🔮 Can we predict product development schedules?
2026-01-29 🚀 How to make releases painless
2026-01-27 📖 When should you write the user manual?
2026-01-26 🎬 Is a Demo the same as a Release?
2026-01-23 ⏱️ How do you find time for higher value tasks?
2026-01-22 ⚖️ Reliability tradeoffs
2026-01-19 ⚖️ Reliability, Cost, and Value
2026-01-16 🔗 What defines reliability?
2026-01-14 🚀 Shipping faster - what are the stakes?
2026-01-13 🔍 It is often more work to review something than to do it
2026-01-12 🚀 How far do you take releases?
2026-01-09 🎯 Standards for internal vs external releases
2026-01-08 📦 What do we release?
2026-01-07 🤝 A release is what unifies Engineering and Business
2026-01-06 📦 What is a release?
2026-01-05 🚀 Shipping faster leads to predictability
2026-01-02 🔗 Platform thinking does not mean we don't use other platforms
2025-12-31 🔍 AI coding requires better inputs and robust verification
2025-12-30 ✨ Impressive is not always effective
2025-12-29 🥄 The beauty of human creativity
2025-12-24 📖 The definition of the word 'Platform'
2025-12-23 🔄 Platform Thinking is a habit
2025-12-22 🎯 Who is Platform Thinking for?
2025-12-18 ⏳ The long-term compression timeline
2025-12-17 🗜️ Long-term compression
2025-12-16 🚀 Platforms are not just for developers
2025-12-15 🔄 Breaking the AI slop cycle
2025-12-12 🤔 Isn't this just agile?
2025-12-10 🏗️ Platform thinking vs 📦 Product thinking
2025-12-09 🏆 What is the ultimate platform success?
2025-12-05 🔀 The division between group and personal workflow
2025-12-04 📦 CDPD - Container Driven Product Development
2025-11-26 📝 Tips for working with Markdown
2025-11-25 🤔 Why > How > What
2025-11-24 🥉 Good, fast, cheap - choose three
2025-11-21 ⏳ The "long-term" may be closer than you think...
2025-11-20 📝 DDPD - 🧪 TDPD - 🚀 RDPD
2025-11-17 📝 DDPD - Document Driven Product Development
2025-11-13 🚀 RDPD - Release Driven Product Development
2025-11-12 🧪 TDPD - Test Driven Product Development
2025-11-07 🍄 Mushroom Management
2025-11-05 🚀 The BIG Release vs. 🌊 a Continuous flow of Value
2025-11-04 🔀 The Power of Git* workflows
2025-11-03 ✍️ Why writing is important
2025-10-31 🔄 Three levels of workflow
2025-10-30 🤝 The benefits of sharing
2025-10-29 🛠️ The new Artisan Age
2025-10-27 🏗️ The difference between Product and Platform
2025-10-23 🎯 A single source of truth
2025-10-17 📈 Scale vs. Value
2025-10-14 💻 Local First Dev
2025-10-13 💬 The importance of effective communication
2025-10-10 🧠 Context is everything
2025-10-08 💡 Reflections from AI-coding a 10,000 line app
2025-10-03 📏 Less code is not the ultimate goal
2025-10-01 😊 Other ways to align the happy path
2025-09-30 😊 Align the "happy path" in your code
2025-09-29 🔓 You should not be needed
2025-09-24 🚧 Three things that hinder product development
2025-09-23 ⚙️ Three aspects of product development
2025-09-22 ⚖️ Technical debt compounds with you doing nothing
2025-09-12 📚 Without docs
2025-09-11 ⚖️ Code is a liability, not an asset
2025-09-10 ✂️ YAGNI
2025-09-09 🐛Kernighan's Law
2025-09-08 🌀 Complex systems are hard to predict
2025-09-04 📊 Simple data formats + powerful tools scale
2025-09-03 📚 Documentation never has to go out of date again
2025-09-02 📚 Keep documentation close to the design/code
2025-08-29 📝 Document "why" not "how"
2025-08-28 🔄 Closed-loop engineering
2025-08-27 🚴 The power of movement
2025-08-26 🔄 Closed-loop humans
2025-08-25 🔄 Look for closed loops
2025-08-22 🔄 Close the loop with AI
2025-08-21 💰 Ways to reduce your AI costs
2025-08-19 💰 What is the cheapest PDM tool out there?
2025-08-18 🗂️ Git has an unfortunate name
2025-08-15 📁 Git* solves the problem of managing files
2025-08-14 📁 The file dilemma
2025-08-13 🔄 AI and documentation - close the loop
2025-08-12 🤖 AI is the new compiler
2025-08-11 ✨ Anyone can write scripts now
2025-08-08 ✏️ Effective Communication (Sketching)
2025-08-07 🎨 Effective Communication (Drawing)
2025-08-06 📹 Effective Communication (Video)
2025-08-05 📸 Effective Communication (Images)
2025-08-04 ✍️ Effective communication (Written)
2025-08-01 🤖 How I use Claude Code to help publish this blog
2025-07-31 🎧 Effective communication (Audio)
2025-07-29 📧 Top vs bottom posting in email
2025-07-28 🎉 200 posts
2025-07-24 🔗 Integration, not isolation (part 2)
2025-07-23 🔗 Integration, not isolation
2025-07-22 📈 What do we mean by scaling?
2025-07-21 🔄 Open loops -> technical debt
2025-07-18 🧩 Composing is hard, complexity is easy
2025-07-17 🎼 Compose software like music
2025-07-16 🌱📈 Simplicity scales
2025-07-15 📏 Goodhart's law
2025-07-10 📈 Why GUI development tools don't scale
2025-07-08 🔭 Text based formats and command-line tools are the future
2025-07-02 🔄 Flipping the playbook for AI coding
2025-07-01 🧑‍💻 The first step in AI coding
2025-06-26 👥 Alternatives to meetings
2025-06-24 🥣 The two ingredients for agility
2025-06-23 ♻️ How to iterate quickly on hardware
2025-06-20 🤝 Modern product development is a collaborative endeavor
2025-06-19 ✨ Use the most advanced technology that is comfortable in your product design
2025-06-18 🔄 When to update application dependencies?
2025-06-16 ➡️ Frontload the boring stuff
2025-06-06 🌿 A natural way to get more testing/automation
2025-06-05 🌒🌓🌔The four phases of product development
2025-06-04 ⏩ Get on with it ...
2025-06-03 👥 Who are users?
2025-06-02 ♻️ How to define an iteration?
2025-05-29 🧑‍💻 How can we increase developer productivity?
2025-05-28 📈 What is the quickest way to store and track data?
2025-05-27 🌱 OSS can decrease or increase your code liability
2025-05-23 🤝🔍 Trust, but verify
2025-05-21 🌽 What is the easiest way to avoid silos?
2025-05-20 🤖 The biggest problem with AI
2025-05-19 🤖 What is AI good for?
2025-05-16 📝 What is my process for capturing experience? (part 3)
2025-05-15 📝 What is my process for capturing experience? (part 2)
2025-05-14 📝 What is my process for capturing experience?
2025-05-13 🧠 How to leverage experience?
2025-05-09 🔭 How to encourage vision?
2025-05-08 🧠🔭 The tension of experience and vision
2025-05-07 🛣️ Two approaches to life
2025-05-06 🏆 The entire story
2025-05-05 👤 It's all about the people
2025-04-29 🧠🔭 Experience and Vision
2025-04-28 📊 Past performance ...
2025-04-25 ✔️ Legacy code
2025-04-24 🚀 Git driven CD -- you know what got deployed
2025-04-23 💸 Technical debt
2025-04-22 🛠️ Another reason to self-host Gitea
2025-04-21 👷 The tension between solo and collaborative work
2025-04-18 🕹️ What can we control?
2025-04-17 😩 Boring, error-prone, repetitive, tedious work
2025-04-16 🧑‍💻 Will AI cause coding to disappear?
2025-04-15 ✅ Guarantees
2025-04-14 🔄 The 2nd key to effective process
2025-04-11 🛠️ Git* -- the new standard for workflow
2025-04-10 🛠️ The defining characteristic of a good workflow tool
2025-04-09 🛠️ The critical features of workflow tools
2025-04-08 ✉️ Email filters
2025-04-07 👥 Everybody Works and the impact on meetings
2025-04-04 👥 Efficient meetings
2025-04-03 👥 Meetings and human relationships
2025-04-02 👥 Why meetings?
2025-04-01 ⚖️ Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
2025-03-31 👌 Struggling to scale your IoT system? Simplify your data.
2025-03-28 🔄 The secret to process
2025-03-27 ⚙️ Fix systems, not people
2025-03-26 📈 Scaling
2025-03-25 🌅 Simple stuff is boring
2025-03-24 👌 The simple/basic things are the most important to get right
2025-03-21 ✅ The problem with software
2025-03-20 🌻 Downstream, things should be better
2025-03-19 🪙 Complexity and Simplicity -- two sides of the same coin
2025-03-18 ⬆️ The business case for improvement
2025-03-17 ⬆️ The path of improvement
2025-03-14 ⬆️ What is improvement?
2025-03-13 👷 Make less work for others, part 2
2025-03-12 👷 Do we make more work for others or less?
2025-03-11 🔄 The business model for updates
2025-03-10 🔄 What is the best software release frequency?
2025-03-07 🚀 How can Arch Linux get by without releases?
2025-03-06 ⚖️ Truth is discovered, not invented
2025-03-05 🔗 Connected systems are different
2025-03-04 🛡️ How to get to secure and reliable
2025-02-28 🏭 Semi-structured part numbers
2025-02-27 👤 Who is our "customer"?
2025-02-26 ⚠️ Toward a Theory of Medical Fallibility
2025-02-24 🛤️ Two paths with experience
2025-02-21 🛤️ Two paths
2025-02-20 👥 Your team as the customer
2025-02-19 🚀 Why are releases important?
2025-02-18 📄 Who is a changelog for?
2025-02-17 👥 Who is the customer in organizational hierarchy?
2025-02-06 👤 Confusion about when we are the customer
2025-02-05 🕊️ Simple -- from whose perspective?
2025-02-04 🕊️ Simple to maintain vs simple to implement
2025-02-03 🤝 Integrate early
2025-01-30 🕊️ Simple to use vs simple to implement
2025-01-29 🤏 Handling the small details
2025-01-28 🛠️ Selecting tools
2025-01-27 🛠️ Two classes of tools
2025-01-24 📝 Documentation is part of the process, not an afterthought
2025-01-23 ✨ Demos vs. Products
2025-01-22 🧩 The three legs of YOUR Platform
2025-01-21 🔍 The importance of small Git commits/pull-requests
2025-01-20 🎆 100 daily emails
2025-01-15 🔁 The importance of Git Commit/Push often
2025-01-13 💭 Thinking, Designing, Developing, Engineering ...
2025-01-10 🔧 envsetup.sh -- a very useful automation technique
2025-01-08 📧 Effective email is either a pointer or notification
2025-01-07 🎓 The problem with experts
2025-01-06 🍳 Preparation - lessons from the kitchen
2025-01-03 😊 Joy
2025-01-02 🪞 Platform reflection
2024-12-27 🙏 Humility
2024-12-23 🔄 The biggest benefit to frequent updates
2024-12-20 📅 Dates in filenames
2024-12-18 🔄 Lifecycle management in dynamic systems
2024-12-17 🧪 Abstractions and Platforms
2024-12-16 🤝 Keeping commitments
2024-12-13 📝 Personal vs. collaborative documentation
2024-12-12 🔧 What is your most important tool?
2024-12-11 📧 Inbox zero
2024-12-10 🏆 Goals vs. Systems
2024-12-09 🏁 Easy to start vs. easy to finish
2024-12-06 🎧 Use a headset optimized for calls
2024-12-05 ⚡ Are your processes proactive or reactive?
2024-11-27 ⚖️ Architecture vs. Optimization
2024-11-25 Creativity
2024-11-22 🔗 Coupling
2024-11-21 ⏰ A platform stuck in time
2024-11-20 🧪 What is a good abstraction?
2024-11-18 ⚡ Improve development efficiency, reduce technical debt
2024-11-14 🎯 Rituals and Culture
2024-11-13 📈 Two ways to scale
2024-11-11 🔍 How to get the little things done?
2024-11-08 😊 How can you make your commercial source code customers happy?
2024-11-07 🚀 Platforms vs Architecture Astronautics
2024-11-06 💪 Habits -- a critical ingredient in YOUR Personal Platform
2024-11-05 🚀 Advanced technology and small players
2024-11-01 What can kids teach us about platforms?
2024-10-31 🏛️ What are the pillars of a good platform?
2024-10-30 🛣️ Kayaks and Platforms
2024-10-29 💻 What is the purpose of technology?
2024-10-25 ✨ The easiest path to reliability ...
2024-10-24 🔍 Where do reliability/stability problems typically come from?
2024-10-23 🔝 Support from the top
2024-10-22 🎯 Doing more with less, rather than less with more
2024-10-21 🆘 How to ask for help
2024-10-18 🔧 How to keep a product maintainable?
2024-10-17 🤝 What happens when someone else tries to use your work?
2024-10-16 📌 Where do you put stuff?
2024-10-15 🌱 When edge nodes grow up
2024-10-14 🔠 How do you partition systems?
2024-10-10 🏷️ How do you consistently name things?
2024-10-09 🔄 How can we be more consistent?
2024-10-08 🔄 Does consistency matter?
2024-10-07 🎲 Isn't it risky to update your dependencies?
2024-10-04 🏗️ Platforms are for building systems
2024-10-02 💸 The cost of updating dependencies, or not
2024-10-01 🆚 What is the difference between YOUR Platform and other platforms?
2024-09-27 💪 Good enough is not good enough
2024-09-26 ⚠️ When things go wrong ...
2024-09-23 🚀 Do you own your deployment?
2024-09-20 🔧 What will you improve today?
2024-09-19 What is the role of vision?
2024-09-18 🔮 Preparing for the future
2024-09-17 ✅ The Platform Test
2024-09-16 🤖 What is the role of AI in your platform?
2024-09-06 🔄 What is the first thing you should implement?
2024-09-05 🚫 No Golden Machines
2024-09-04 🙋 How to help yourself?
2024-09-03 🔎 Seeing patterns
2024-09-02 🗝️ What is the best tool for private Git repos?
2024-08-30 🐶 Lessons from a 1-year old dog
2024-08-29 🔍 Solving problems or symptoms?
2024-08-28 🐙 Github and why does it matter?
2024-08-27 🔁 Tracking upstream and why does it matter?
2024-08-26 🔧 What makes a good Yocto BSP?
2024-08-23 ⏰ The present or the future?
2024-08-22 👥 Platform != People
2024-08-21 ✅ What is the simplest form of automation?
2024-08-20 📈 How does your product value increase after the initial sale?
2024-08-19 ⚠️ Hack-it, ship-it, forget-it ...
2024-08-16 🏆 What is the #1 purpose of YOUR Platform?
2024-08-15 🌱 Culture
2024-08-14 🏗️ Three levels of YOUR Platform
2024-08-13 👣 What are the first steps?
2024-08-12 🔄 What is YOUR Platform? (v2)
2024-08-08 ❓ But what if ...
2024-08-07 🔍 You are not Google
2024-08-06 💰 Owning YOUR platform is not more expensive
2024-08-05 ⚖️ False vs Real Platform Development
2024-08-02 🎆 Do something different
2024-08-01 🐜 The smaller you are, the more import YOUR Platform is
2024-07-31 😨 Control is a scary thing
2024-07-30 🎛️ What is control?
2024-07-29 🎯 Why do we need some level of control?
2024-07-26 🏁 The long game
2024-07-25 ♾️ It's about not starting over every time
2024-07-24 🌐 Complex Systems, Simple Platforms
2024-07-22 🔹 Simplicity
2024-07-18 🏢 What is your Platform?
2024-07-17 ✨ The Beauty of Constraints
2024-07-16 😱 The tragedy of no constraints
2024-07-15 👋 Introduction