Five for Friday – November 15, 2025

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.

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