innovation
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🛠️ Tools or Processes?
What matters more – having better tools or better processes? One tends to enable, the other to restrict. Companies often split into tool-builder cultures (optimized for enabling engineers and teams) and process cultures (optimized for contr…
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🥄 The beauty of human creativity
In this age of machine-generated perfection, something is still deeply rewarding about grabbing a stick of wood and making something by hand. This past Christmas, with the help of kids and grandkids, we made a few mixing spoons for gifts. S…
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🔀 The division between group and personal workflow
When thinking about developer workflows, tools, and resources, dividing them into two categories proves useful: personal and group. A group resource is something that multiple people use (or should use): SDKs, libraries, linters, formatters…
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🛠️ The new Artisan Age
We live in a world of powerful tools. Milwaukee battery-powered hand tools, high-end PCB design suites, cloud platforms, open-source tools, etc. And while these tools get us a good way toward the goal, they do not do everything. Additionall…
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⚙️ Three aspects of product development
Finding and leveraging existing technology. Developing some of your own technology. Mixing it together. All three are necessary.
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⏰ A platform stuck in time
Vintage is great in some contexts—I like old woodworking hand tools. Even in our modern jobs, some vintage tools, like a pencil and paper, are still very useful. But information technology moves forward, and we rarely benefit from using dec…