Technology Commentary

Self-describing content-addressed identifiers for distributed systems - multiformats/cid: Self-describing content-addressed identifiers for distributed systems

Free up some slack by tightening your language

This is a brain teaser. An idea find useful when discussing the pros and cons of real-life use cases and features.

MOCAS is the world's oldest computer program that's still in active use. It was launched in 1958 by the United States Department of Defense for keeping track of contracts and payments.

Now its functions are shattered between innumerable vendors

One of the most attractive things about language design is to be able to tweak the syntax of a lan…

LLVM used to be hailed as a great thing, but with language projects such as Rust, Zig and others c…

A new year: Reflection time

Why I decided to mostly move to Linux in 2024, and what I’ve learned in the process of that move.

When we talk about metrics, there is often an assumption that everyone in the company needs the same data to make decisions and this is dangerously incorrect. Different levels of the organization need different kinds of data to make effective decisions. Yet, all too often we use the wrong data at the wrong point.

Treating computing as a utility, like electricity, is an old idea. But now it makes financial sense—a historic shift that is reshaping the IT industry.

Working out how to apply Theory of Constraints in real-world situations can be hard, but there are two simple ways to kickstart it.

How the growth of Apple in the Enterprise is changing the way we think about productivity.

Why dependencies should be checked into version control.

One thing that often strikes me when sitting in on client interviews is how many candidates lack an historical perspective on software development. In a profession of “perpetual beginners&#82…

Why features would make product development easier, but don’t exist

Data-centric artificial intelligence can help reduce hallucinations and biases and improve AI output quality in generative AI systems.

This week, CES is a trigger for thoughts on AI and the physical world. And more on mundane robotics, embedded intelligence, and wandering humans.

I recently finished reading “How Infrastructure Works”, by Deb Chandra. It is a must read if you are doing APIs at scale today. She opens the book by talking about charismatic infrastructure like the Brooklyn Bridge or the St Louis Arch. These are grand collective public infrastructure projects that rise above, stand out, and have a personality all of their own. This look at physical infrastructure got me thinking about APIs (duh), and how Stripe, Twilio, and a handful of other APIs enjoy a status as charismatic APIs. Her story is pushing me to think about why they enjoy this position and why can’t other APIs achieve the same status. Like physical infrastructure, I think there are certain characteristics that render virtual infrastructure more tangible, meaningful, and useful, which will help them not just succeed, but achieve a charismatic status in our stories.

How can organizations achieve the business goals for their software efforts when so many pitfalls threaten their success?

Recently I was chatting with a Staff-plus engineer who was struggling to influence his peers. Each time he suggested an approach, his team agreed with him, but his peers in the organization disagreed and pushed back. He wanted advice on why his peers kept undermining his approach. After our chat, I followed up by talking with his peers about some recent disagreements, and they kept highlighting missing context from the engineer’s proposals.

GraphQL Subscriptions in enterprise with WebSockets are a problem. Here''s how the WunderGraph Cosmo Router can help with event-based Subscriptions.

I will never forget the time I discovered how web pages were made. The year was 1995. I was using Windows 3.1 like most everyone, and it didn’t even support the TCP/IP network stack out of the box. I had to install a program called Trumpet Winsock and a hot new web browser called Netscape to connect to the Internet…