The speed of change in technology often appears to be the industry's defining characteristic. Nothing highlights that perception more than the recent and relentless march of AI advancements. But for as much as some things in technology change, many other things stay the same. Like vi! vi is a programming text editor that was created by...

I've been a Sonos megafan for years. Owned probably two dozen devices for different homes. Mainly amps for in-ceiling speakers, but also some Ones, 3s, 5s. All of it. Because it Just Worked when it came to multi-room music. Now it doesn't, and it hasn't for a long time, so I've been back in the market. I'm not exactly sure what the pro...

We had originally planned to go all-in on passkeys for ONCE/Campfire, and we built the early authentication system entirely around that. It was not a simple setup! Handling passkeys properly is surprisingly complicated on the backend, but we got it done. Unfortunately, the user experience kinda sucked, so we ended up ripping it all out...

A big part of the reason that companies are going ga-ga over AI right now is the promise that it might materially lower their payroll for programmers. If a company currently needs 10 programmers to do a job, each have a cost of $200,000/year, then that's a $2m/year problem. If AI could even cut off 1/4 of that, they would have saved ha...

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking: "If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it?" And it's a fair question! It intuitively rings true until you give it a moment's consideration. Linux is even free, so what's stopping mass adoption, if it's actually better? My response: “If exercising is so healthy, why don't more peo...

History is full of long stretches of dominance by noble ideas and despots, times of prosperity and of dark ages. Each of which must have seemed like they would never end to the people who lived through them. If you were a citizen of the Ottoman empire 1452, you probably didn't imagining life any other way. Ditto the height of the Roman...

I've always had an ambivalent relationship with goals. I don't like goals that feel like checkpoints on a treadmill. They make you reach for a million dollars in revenue, celebrate for a second, and then turn the chase to five million the minute after. No thanks. But specific, material goals aren't the only kind you can set. Here's a g...

After experimenting with a number of management roles over the last few years, 37signals is back to its original configuration: None. We once more have no full-time managers whose sole function is to organize or direct the work of others. Everyone doing management here does so on the side, next to their primary work as an individual co...

The birth rate is dropping all over the world. In some places, like South Korea (0.72), it is so low people are starting to worry about a national extinction. In other places, including all of Europe (average 1.5, Spain 1.29), it's merely bad and alarming. And nobody seems to know exactly why. Even in Denmark, it's now so low (1.5) tha...

It's hard to sell simple, because simple looks easy, and who wants to pay for that? Of course, everyone says they want something simple, but the way they buy reveals that they usually don't. This is the secret that the merchants of complexity have long since figured out. That clever and sophisticated beats basic and straightforward mos...

Since the dawn of computing, humans have sought to estimate how long it takes to build software, and for just as long, they've consistently failed. Estimating even medium-sized projects is devilishly difficult, and estimating large projects is virtually impossible. Yet the industry keeps insisting that the method that hasn't worked for...

I used to find the American self-image of being this uniquely freedom-loving, freedom-having people delusional. Sure, I'd think, you're not North Korea or Venezuela, but is that really a standard worth celebration? Shouldn't America compare itself to higher alternatives, like Europe or even the rest of the Anglosphere? Turns out I just...

The first laptop I ordered back when my Linux journey began was the Framework 13. I immediately liked a lot about it. The keyboard is a big step up over the MacBook Pro, primarily because of the 50% longer key travel. And I love the matte screen and 3:2 aspect ratio. Both feel way nicer for programming. But running a 2256x1504 resoluti...

Companies have spent billions on cookie banner compliance only to endlessly annoy users with no material improvement to their privacy, but this unsightly blight is still with us (and the rest of the internet!). All because the EU has no mechanism for self-correcting its legislative failures, even with years of evidence in the bag. The ...

Before diving into the world of mechanical keyboards, I'd never heard the word "thock" before. But I soon learned that it describes one of those strangely seductive sounds you can produce from pressing the keys on a keyboard tuned for acoustical joy. And now, dammit, I've acquired a taste for this type of ear candy, and I can't stop sm...

It now seems laughable that only a few months ago, I was questioning whether I'd actually be able to switch off the Apple stack and stick to my choice. That's what two decades worth of entrenched habits will do to your belief in change! But not only was it possible, it's been immensely enjoyable. What seemed so difficult at first now a...

Nothing gets me quite as fired up as discovering the future early and undistributed. That feeling of realizing that something is simply better, and the only reason it hasn't taken off yet is because the world hasn't realized it. It's amazing, and it's how I'm feeling about Linux right now. That "how did I not know it was this good" sen...

Linux can look and feel so good, but it often doesn't out of the box. It's almost like there's a rite of passage in certain parts of the community where becoming an expert in the intricacies of every tool and its theming is required to prove you're a proper nerd. I think that's a bit silly, so I created Omakub: An opinionated web devel...

When Ruby on Rails was launched over twenty years ago, I was a twenty-some young programmer convinced that anyone who gave my stack a try would accept its universal superiority for solving The Web Problem. So I pursued the path of the crusade, attempting to convert the unenlightened masses by the edge of a pointed argument. And for a l...

For over twenty years, the Mac was the default at 37signals. For designers, programmers, support, and everyone else. That mono culture had some clear advantages, like being able to run Kandji and macOS-specific setup scripts. But it certainly also had its disadvantages, like dealing with Apple's awful reliability years, and being cut o...

Programmers are often skeptical of aesthetics because they frequently associate it with veneering. A thin sheen of flashy marketing design covering up for a rotten or deficient product. Something that looks good from afar, but reveals itself to be a disappointing imitation up close. They're right to be skeptical. Cheap veneers are the ...

When we introduced a default setup for system tests in Rails 5.1 back in 2016, I had high hopes. In theory, system tests, which drive a headless browser through your actual interface, offer greater confidence that the entire machine is working as it ought. And because it runs in a black-box fashion, it should be more resilient to imple...

I've never seen so much paranoia in technology about missing out on The Next Big Thing as with AI. Companies seem less excited about the prospects than they are petrified that its going to kill them. Maybe that fear is justified, maybe it's not, but what's incontestable is the kind of desperation it's leading to. Case in point: Slack. ...

Using open source software does not entitle you to a vote on the direction of the project. The gift you've received is the software itself and the freedom of use granted by the license. That's it, and this ought to be straight forward, but I repeatedly see that it is not (no matter how often it is repeated). And I think the problem ste...

The saying "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" is at its essence about risk management. The traditional wisdom goes that if you buy from a big company, you're going to be safe. It may be more expensive, but big companies project an image of stability and reliability, so buying their wares is seen as the prudent choice. Except, it is...

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, I had friends who were socially awkward nerds, friends who were cool but didn't like school at all, friends who were good at school but couldn't muster the will to finish their math homework, and friends who were tomboys. None of these kids ever got a diagnosis. They were all well within the sp...

In November of 2022, I wrote about the waning days of DEI's dominance, and enumerated four factors that I saw as primary drivers of this decline. Those waning days have now been brought to a close, and DEI, as an obsessive, ideological preoccupation of the corporate world, is done. Witness this tabulation of DEI (and ESG) mentions in e...

This isn't just about one awful ad. I mean, yes, the ad truly is awful. It symbolizes everything everyone has ever hated about digitization. It celebrates a lossy, creative compression for the most flimsy reason: An iPad shedding an irrelevant millimeter or two. It's destruction of beloved musical instruments is the perfect metaphor fo...

Few numbers exemplified the early growth of Rails like attendance at RailsConf. I think we started with something like 400-600 attendees at the inaugural conference in Chicago in 2006, then just kept doubling year over year, as Rails went to the moon. If memory serves me right, we had something like 1,800 attendees in 2008? It was rapi...

There's an interesting psychological phenomenon where programmers tend to ascribe more trust to computers run by anyone but themselves. Perhaps it's a corollary to imposter syndrome, which leads programmers to believe that if a computer is operated by AWS or SaaS or literally anyone else, it must be more secure, better managed, less bu...