Free resources
Free resources to help learn and think about product development.
Platform thinking, applied inward
A business is a product, and it deserves the same foundation you would give a product: a few pieces I built, many more I borrowed, and plain text in Git underneath it all.
BEC OS
How BEC Systems itself runs: plain-text accounting, invoices generated from time logs in Git, self-hosted Git and community, and the processes that hold it together.
Blog
20+ years of product development ideas.
Some things are easier to show than to describe
Three YouTube channels: one for the general thinking, and one for each project where a screen recording says more than a paragraph.
Cliff Brake
Walkthroughs, demos, and recorded thinking on embedded Linux, build systems, and connected products.
Yoe Distro
Build system walkthroughs and demos: setting up a build, working with layers and machines, and the workflow around an embedded Linux image.
Simple IoT
Demos and design discussions for Simple IoT: the user interface, the data model, and how configuration and data move between cloud and edge.
TMPDIR: learning from other engineers
Where we dig into the thinking behind how others are building.
The TMPDIR Podcast
Conversations on embedded Linux, Yocto, Zephyr, IoT, and microcontroller engineering. Khem Raj and I talk through BSPs, OTA updates, kernel work, firmware, and the tooling behind real product engineering, often with a guest.
TMPDIR Community
A friendly place by engineers for engineers: technology, hardware and software development, workflow, and the questions that do not fit in a bug tracker. Bring a problem, or answer someone else's.
Where the ideas get tested
Ideas are cheap until something has to ship. These are the projects that back the writing, each one a public artifact.
yoe build
An embedded Linux build system for small teams: fast native builds, language-native package managers, and AI as a first-class interface. Every release is public, including the parts still being worked out.
Simple IoT
An application and framework for connected systems, with one Go binary running in the cloud and on embedded Linux gateways. Documentation, architecture notes, and the reasoning behind the design decisions.
Release First
The practice of shipping the first release early and then never stopping, so that feedback and automation arrive at the beginning of a project instead of the end.
GitHub
The tools, Ansible roles, Claude Code plugins, and smaller utilities that did not need a site of their own. The full list, with the reasoning for each choice, is on the technology page.
Something here worth a conversation?
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