Writing

Notes and essays on engineering, work, and whatever's caught my attention. Partly to share, partly so I remember what I've worked on.

#TitleTopicDate

What Playing Poker Taught Me

Lessons about risk, variance, and reading people from four years of playing poker seriously.

Life 2026·07 13

Just Talk to It

Why I dictate my prompts to LLMs instead of typing them, and why the results are better.

Six Components That Make Interfaces Feel Alive

Six live, interactive UI components I came across exploring popular UX libraries, and the small detail that makes each one feel good.

Design 2026·06 11

The AI Headcount Equation

A look at the real costs of adopting AI: the headcount cuts that fund it, the extra output you get back, and why the payoff is so hard to measure.

The Iterative Developer in the AI Era

Why shipping an imperfect first draft works so well with AI tooling, and what a company must do to support it.

My AI Dev Workflow

A layered AI development setup: Claude Code as the foundation, with custom skills, plugins, MCP servers, and multi-agent orchestration on top.

Collaboration vs Innovation

Constant collaboration and breakthrough innovation pull against each other. How to get the best of both.

Teams 2022·06 07

Early Learnings as a Staff Engineer

Observations from my first six months as a staff engineer, on alignment, influence, and impact.

Career 2021·11 06

The Zettelkasten Method

A note-taking method for retaining and recalling what you learn, and the software that makes it work.

Notes 2021·10 05

Build for the User

A short list of questions that keep your software focused on what actually works for the people using it.

Craft 2021·05 04

Encapsulate for Easy Refactors

How encapsulating logic today makes tomorrow's refactor easy, shown by extending a Rails role into its own model.

Ruby 2020·12 03

A Developer's Guide to Processes

What a process actually is: memory layout, states, the control block, process creation, and interprocess communication.

Systems 2020·08 02

My Essential Mac Applications

The Mac apps I rely on every day, grouped by productivity, entertainment, and development.

Tools 2020·06 01

Thread Safe Connection Pool in Ruby

Building a thread-safe connection pool with class instance variables, a Mutex, and the connection_pool gem.