It’s been an interesting week (aren’t they all these days?). Here are a few things you may (or may not) like.

• Let’s lead with good news. It was great to see Ash Hunsberger talking with Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin about Developer Experience. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Ash the last year, and she’s amazing.
• I thought there was a lot of truth in this post on Ugly Code and Dumb Things.
• I worked on a few “science projects” when at Microsoft. One of them was a pet project I took on to make the debug version of consumer windows (win 9x) run. It was neglected throughout windows 98 development, and wouldn’t boot, let alone run (or run efficiently). So – articles like this one on Making my debug build run 100x faster so that it is finally usable warm my heart.
• I read a lot of books, and I love pattern matching. So I adored this article that found patterns between Team Topologies and Deep Work (two books I’ve re-read a few times each).
• Finally – I bought a new watch. Apple watches are cool, but when I’m hiking for a week, I don’t want a watch I need to recharge. I picked up this Garmin Instinct 3 Solar, and it’s fantastic.

And that’s a wrap for this week!

Back again for another week of semi-interesting links.

• I don’t even know where to start with DOGE. They don’t appear to know what they’re doing, nor how relational databases work. And apparently – anyone can edit their website. What a fucking mess.
• On a more positive (but not that postive) note, it’s performance review season at a lot of companies. This guide on Owning the Tough Conversations is full of excellent advice for managers.
• I’ve never been a fan of staging (or testing) environments. This article sums up many of my thoughts – You might not need staging
• I’ve been asked about a billion times in the last few weeks how to measure the productivity boost from ai coding assistants. This article has some reasons why I hate this question as well as some tips (warning – it’s a product site, but the points are valid).
• And speaking of head-nodders with AI, let me drop a double to end the post this week. Tech’s Dumbest Mistake: Why Firing Programmers for AI Will Destroy Everything, and AI is Stifling Tech Adoption.

Enjoy.

I took last week off – nobody noticed (or at least nobody said anything). For those of you reading, here are a few fun articles I read this week.

• I met Alessandra Moreira many years ago in Australia. Her substack is wonderful, and I especially liked this article on Why Engineering Leaders Must Rethink Testing to Build Reliable Software
• I thought this article on strategy was valuable and useful.
• A head-nodder all the way through, this article on the troubles with context-switching is chock full of information that not enough people will read and take to heart.
• I came across this article on Goals, Video Games, And The Quest Mentality that is really insightful. I’ve spent a chunk of times over the years layering good teamwork and problem solving with video games, and this article shows me that there’s still a lot of validity to those parallels.
• And finally, Tim O’Reilly (yes, that Tim O’Reilly) wrote about The End of Programming as We Know It. It’s a fun read, and worth the time.

That’s all for this week.

-A

It’s another week of interesting things on the internet. Here are five worth sharing.

• I enjoyed this article on 3 Things to Embrace to Elevate Your Company’s Culture
• …and I also enjoyed this one on Employee autonomy explained
• I’ve used copilot a bit for personal projects, and think that AI code gen can be pretty fantastic – however, AI is Creating a Generation of Illiterate Programmers
• Yet…Dustin Ewers feels that AI Isn’t Going to Kill the Software Industry
• But apparently, AI is everywhere – Trump Admin Accused of Using AI to Draft Executive Orders

Brief but worth reading – see you in a week(ish)

Back again – here are a few things I found this week that I thought were worth sharing.

• I often give similar advice, but maybe someone else saying it (and better) will mean more. Why Leaders Shouldn’t Try To Do It All
• I enjoyed (and agreed with) this article on Skip Level 1:1s
• I thought this article on The River: A Better Way to Code was well-written, and thought provoking. I’m going to need to let it stew a bit, but I think I like it.
• There are a million articles on this, but I’ve been interested in reading about the fate of TikTok in the US. We’ll see what happens…
• And finally – Season 2 of Severance is out – I love this show, and can’t wait to watch it all.

That’s all for this week – we’ll try again in seven days.

I’m back. I never left, and I never stopped consuming content – I just took a break from sharing things I liked. The break is over – and while nobody complained about no posts for a month here are some things to look at anyway.

• Tim Ottinger has a nice article on Estimates vs. No Estimates which a lot of you should probably read.
• Michael Lopp posted an article on Managing Up recently. It’s a good article, but interesting because I’ve had a similar draft post sitting in the queue at angryweasel blog for a few months now.
• James Shore wrote a recap of a recent presentation about The Best Product Organization in the World.
• I really enjoyed this article on A New Definition For Team Productivity
• And finally, Dan Schaeffer asks, Should You Be a Software Generalist or Specialist? (the proper answer is, of course, a little bit of both).

That’s all for this new week in a weird new year. L8r.

First things first, I’m going to take the rest of the year off after today. Next week is a holiday, and then December is madness. I’ll do a few more posts in my other blog, and then hit the ground running in 2025.

• First thing worth reading is a short and pragmatic plea that on-call shifts last from Tuesday to Tuesday. On my last team at Microsoft, our on-call shifts were Wednesday to Wednesday (which I sort of like even better), but the author makes some good points.
• Just about every leader I know could be a better at delegation (and yes, I’m looking in the mirror as well). This article on Common obstacles to effective delegation has a lot of great points and advice.
• I also enjoyed the opinions in this article on job promotions. A lot of people get obsessed with promotions rather than the growth opportunities job changes can offer. Great advice in this article as well.
• I’m infatuated with design, but know almost nothing about it. In fact, I was surprised that I’ve read two of the books in this list of Top ten design books. Honestly, I’m not going to read all of them, but I’m definitely going to read some of them.
• And finally – for the few people out there who understand how AI can help them, and also understand the challenges in building effective solutions using AI, I discovered super duper. It looks simple, effective, and I expect it to be massively underused by a lot of orgs who could benefit. Time will tell.

And that’s all for this week, and that’s all for 2025 while I take a FfF break. As always, thanks for reading.

Another week, another five things I felt like sharing.

• I have dealt with, and made fun of “flaky tests” for a good chunk of my career (probably a full blog post on this topic someday). I’m excited to see actual research and tools from trunk.io on some ways to identify and fix flakiness in large test suites.
• I once got a VIP tour at Riot (including playing Leage in their gaming complex). I played the game more than a little, but not a lot. I wasn’t super pumped to hear about a series based on the game, but Arcane slaps!
• This article on Psychological Safety vs. High Standards is excellent. It hits on a lot of points from Heifetz’s Leadership on the Line as well.
• I ran into someone (in tech) recently who said, “I don’t really want to learn new things”. Frankly, I wonder about the job security of someone like this. This article on Learning Starts by Caring About Something is a good read, and gives me some ideas on how to inspire people like this to focus on learning a little more.
• Lastly, I’m avoiding the AI trend and asking you all to read this article on 5 Non-LLM Software Trends To Be Excited About. Yes, Virginia, there are programming concepts in 2024 that don’t involve LLMs

That’s it – we’ll try again next week.

This. Week. Sucked. Here are your five things worth reading (if you want).

• I’ve pointed to this site before, but worth re-mentioning What The Fuck Just Happened Today is a great recap of, well, what the fuck just happened today.
• I enjoyed this post from Laura Tacho on Dumb Leadership Mistakes I Made. Admittedly, I’ve made one or two (or more) of these myself.
• I thought this was an interesting take on Why DX Doesn’t Matter. It hits some good points, but not all of the points of DX.
• On the last AB Testing Podcast, Brent and I discussed performance reviews a bit, so it’s no secret that I also enjoyed this article on Performance Reviews Considered Harmful.
• Lastly, I continue to be blown away by people who try agile (or scrum), and fail because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I think this article on Scrum Doesn’t Have to Suck would be a help for some of the folks who have bastardized Scrum.

It’s Friday, and those are five things. That should be good for this week.

How the hell is it November already? I’m at home again (and can’t remember if I was home last week), but here are a few things I found worth sharing.

• Probably not news for anyone, but the latest DORA report is out. Biggest takeaway (yet not surprising at all) for me is that AI coding assistants actually hurt software delivery. I completely believe it will get better…someday.
• I don’t use it anymore, but many hundreds of lines of bug fixes and code in XBox One (and thousands more in infrastructure) were written by me using Notepad++ – which is now 21 years old!
• Jit Gosai (who has sent a number of followers to my substack) posted this week on Why We Failed at Testability (and What We Learned!)
• Nice post on feedback today on HBR – Why High Performers Need Feedback Too
• In a story that will probably be written 1000 times – Resume : AI applied for the job

That’s my list for today. Not the best, but not the worst. See you in a week.