This article was originally published in the new 37signals dev blog. Read it there. I have often heard this: vanilla Rails can only get you so far. At some point, apps become unmaintainable, and you need a different approach that brings the missing pieces, because Rails encourages a poor separation of concerns at the architectural leve...

Back in college, they told me that I would start my career writing code, but eventually, I would move to a position where I would ask others to code my designs. To celebrate that this turned out to be completely false, here are some assorted reflections as a 40-year-old programmer that looks back: • Compared to my younger versions, I f...

Fractal is about similar patterns recurring at progressively smaller scales. To me, good code is a fractal: you observe the same qualities repeated at different levels of abstraction. This is not surprising. Good code is the one that is easy to understand, and the best mechanism we have to deal with complexity is building abstractions....

Deadlines in software have bad press, for a reason. Say “we need to release this version at this date”, and you are stressing everyone out. Now, say “we need a version of this at this date”, and you are actually helping to ship. I learned about this idea of fixed deadlines and negotiable scopes from Basecamp many years ago, way before ...

When working remotely, this is a great habit: make decisions and communicate them, but try to avoid getting blocked waiting on others. Imagine this typical example: you are not sure about how to do something. Your first idea might be to jump into a chat and ask someone for help. I won’t say I never ever do this, but it’s not a great ap...