Creativity is just connecting things of different shapes, and forms, and colors, and functions that do not seem like they'd work together, but they do. Look at a car, you've got a square, and an odd triangle somewhere, and four or five or six small pentagons within one circle, and a square, and a rectangle, and an oval, and so on. And ...

Here’s a bit of a software snack for new front end engineers. Whether you are new to the field, or transitioning from one software discipline to another and readying yourself for the real world: Build a relationship with backend engineers, understand how they think, how they work, and work with them. As a frontend engineer you’re going...

There's so much good out in the world, and every once in a while I encounter great people who inspire me, and it is kind of all I need, a spark. That spark ignites me, and it usually takes me to the next level. What does it look like? It can be anything! From a great icon, a wonderful blog post, a great chat over coffee, a podcast epis...

Are things stupid simple? Continue to do the great work you do. Are things going easy? Continue to do the great work you do. Are things going average? Continue to do the great work you do. Are things normal? Continue to do the great work you do. Are things abnormal? Continue to do the great work you do. Are things tough? Continue to do...

Information comes at us faster than any other working generation. In the 80s, the memo would have to be walked to your desk. A question required waiting in line, no one had unlimited access to you in seconds. How to manage all the chaos? If the grass in the yard is too long, to me, that's a hint that I'm losing control and things are g...

Be.

As the years roll, I continue to learn more about myself. And I've come to the realization that as a person full of wonder, I can more easily achieve and mesh the mind with other people full of wonder. I can also motivate those who have fallen into a plateau, but I have no expectations from me, or from them to ever succeed. As that's a...

Leveraging the cloud can be very messy or very artsy. And when done right, there’s actually no need to feel either “tied to the cloud” or “tied to that cloud”. Software: a platform, an app, or whatever it may be is a product of parts. The art of parts is getting lost, the mess of stitches and bandaids and tight coupling (welding) is pr...

Companies claim your data is private. There is actual privacy, and there is the perception of privacy. Knowing the distinction is, ahem, key.

Books are the antidote to the negative side of Social Media. Social media was born and all of us hopped on. It happened without us being educated about it’s impact personally and globally, and about how it would change the world. In some ways for the better but in a lot of ways not. It caught us unprepared. The proliferation of adverti...

Sometimes as engineers our job is to be a Roomba of old code. You memorize a map of it, making it easier to navigate next time. Whilst also sucking in the dust and discarding it. The next time you touch the code its cleaner, and you’re also more familiar with it. Be the Roomba of your code base a few times, and that’s all it takes to d...

They might be better than failures, and they most certainly live alongside failures. Small wins are important, they bring other wins alongside it, some of them big.

Humanity comes first, technology comes second. We need technology for the sake of humanity.

- “What is your favorite hobby outside of coding” he tweets. - “NYC > SF” she tweets. - “HTML is not a programming language” they tweet. Data mining. Data mining. Data mining. Engagement. Engagement. Engagement. People love to talk about themselves. People love arguments. People engage in controversial topics. But people are making it ...

Intentionality.

Notifications. They're not good. It regards enterprises clamoring for screen time in their app, and continue the growth and centralization of data. They want to maximize your screen time in their app, whether it is good or bad for you, as long as it is good for them. The future is in decentralization. We need control of our lives, we n...

Experiences good or bad, are part of one's book, they're part of our story. It might not look or feel that way while we are going through it, but the more of those we have gone through, the more we begin to embrace it and trust the process. The process? Life. Trust the process.

You are done writing code. Now what, ship? You have other things to do, and this code review is “delaying” you. Yeah, no. Software Engineering can be like running a car repair shop. You have to be able to wait for the parts to arrive for one car that’s in service, and be able to move to a second car, leave the first one half-way repair...