April Blog Roundup

This month I realized that this blog is easier to keep up with if I just document my projects. I released episodes 4, 5, 6, and 7 of my podcast about writing. I also wrote articles about how I am self-hosting it, using S3 for the media, and how I get simple stats.

I also wrote an article about Bicycle, an open-source library I am working on with a couple of friends, and I’ve been writing articles about WatchKit on App-o-Mat. And this post itself is an example of just documenting my projects.

Most of the articles I write for this space are about software development and processes.

  • In Defense of Tech Debt encourages you to just think of tech debt as a cost which might be acceptable.
  • But, I think Tech Debt Happens to You most of the time because of dependencies.
  • And then in Timing Your Tech Debt Payments, I compare payments to servicing interest and paying down principal and offer a best time to do the latter.
  • In It’s Bad, Now What?, I talk about pre-planning actions for when monitoring shows problems
  • In Assume the Failure, I recommend framing all risks as your own failures, not external ones, so that you can personally mitigate them.
  • In Mitigating the Mitigations, I show how you can’t wait until a risk materializes to do your mitigation plan. It might be something you need to do somewhat in parallel.

And, I wrote some articles on gaining expertise

I have been thinking about the great works in software and software writing as I think about where I want to spend my time. I think there’s an interesting cycle of making -> tool making -> making with the tool, where the result is content in a new medium.