Computer Information, Tips and Tricks

Tech firm fined $1.1m by California for selling high-school students’ data I agree with Brian Marick’s response No such story should be published without a comparison of the fine to the company’s previous year revenue and profits, or valuation of last funding round. (I could only find a valuation of $11.0M in 2017.) We desperately […]

I have always been uncomfortable with patents. Ideologically, I subscribe to Richard Stallman’s school of thought that ideas should move freely, innovation should compound in the open, and progress should not be fenced off by legal constructs. Over time, this led me to develop a strong discomfort with patents, and I genuinely believed they cause […]

When I pair program with a colleague on something complex, we don’t start at the keyboard. We go to the whiteboard. We sketch components, debate data flow, argue about boundaries. We align on what the system needs to do before discussing how to build it. Only after this alignment — sometimes quick, sometimes extended — […]

I don’t tend to post links to videos here, as I can’t stand watching videos to learn about things. But some talks are worth a watch, and I do suggest this overview on how organizations are currently using AI by Laura Tacho. There’s various nuggets of data from her work with DX: 92.6% of devs […]

When I onboard a new developer, I don’t just point them at the codebase and say “go.” I walk them through our conventions. I show them examples of code we consider good. I explain why we made certain architectural choices—why we use Fastify instead of Express, why services are functional instead of class-based, why validation […]

Do you want to run OpenClaw? It may be fascinating, but it also raises significant security dangers. Jim Gumbley, one of my go-to sources on security, has some advice on how to mitigate the risks. While there is no proven safe way to run high-permissioned agents today, there are practical patterns that reduce the blast […]

In Februrary 2026, Thoughtworks hosted a workshop called “The Future of Software Development” in Deer Valley Utah. While it was held in the mountains of Utah as a nod to the 25th anniversary of the writing of Manifesto for Agile Software Development, it was a forward-looking event, focusing on how the rise of AI and […]

If you’ve hung around agile circles for long, you’ve probably heard about the concept of servant leadership, that managers should think of themselves as supporting the team, removing blocks, protecting them from the vagaries of corporate life. That’s never sounded quite right to me, and a recent conversation with Kent Beck nailed why – it’s […]

I try to limit my time on stage these days, but one exception this year is at DDD Europe. I’ve been involved in Domain-Driven Design, since its very earliest days, having the good fortune to be a sounding board for Eric Evans when he wrote his seminal book. It’ll be fun to be around the […]