Technology Commentary

There's no silver bullet, but if we put some "lead" bullets in the right places, we have a good shot at keeping sensitive data out of logs.

Last April, I wrote a well-received article about the 13 software engineering laws - Hyrum’s, Conway’s, Zawinski’s, and 10 famous others.

Specifications do not address the limitations of agentic coding

Encore is an open-source framework for building robust distributed systems, using a declarative infrastructure-as-code approach ensuring performance, security, and quality.

Infrastructure from Code derives cloud infrastructure directly from application code, replacing Terraform and YAML with declarations in TypeScript or Go. Here's how it works.

Most SQL tools treat SQLite as a “flavor” of a generic SQL parser. They approximate the language, which means they break on SQLite-exclusive features like virtual tables, miss syntax like UPSERT, and ignore the 22 compile-time flags that change the syntax SQLite accepts. So I built syntaqlite: an open-source parser, formatter, validator, and LSP built directly on SQLite’s own Lemon-generated grammar. It sees SQL exactly how SQLite sees it, no matter which version of SQLite you’re using or which feature flags you compiled with. It ships as a CLI, VS Code extension, Claude Code LSP plugin, and C/Rust libraries. There’s also a web playground which you can try now: paste any SQLite SQL and see parsing, formatting, and validation live in the browser, no install needed. Full documentation is available here. Here’s syntaqlite in action: Formatting with the CLI syntaqlite fmt -e "select u.name,u.email,count(e.id) as events from users u join events e on e.user_id=u.id where u.signed_up_at=date('now','-30 days') group by u.name,u.email having count(e.id)10 order by events desc" SELECT u.name, u.email, count(e.id) AS events FROM users AS u JOIN events AS e ON e.user_id = u.id WHERE u.signed_up_at = date('now', '-30 days') GROUP BY u.name, u.email HAVING count(e.id) 10 ORDER BY events DESC; Validation with the CLI

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe shares his thoughts and plans for his newest startup, Mind Robotics.

Hello there, If you’re an avid reader of blogs, you’ll know this medium is basically dead now. Everyone switched to making YouTube videos, complete with cuts and costume changes every f…

The real impact of the digital revolution hits us directly in the place that matters most: our very experience of life

A friend of mine has been a software developer for most of the last five decades, and has worked with everything from 1960s mainframes to the machines of today. She recently tried AI coding tools t…

In the early days of the Internet, having a high-speed IP connection in your home or even a small business was, if not impossible, certainly a rarity. Connecting to a computer in those days require…

It seems that for as long as there have been readily available 3D printers, there have been moral panics about their being used to print firearms. The latest surrounds a Washington State Legislatur…

If you have ever read science fiction, you’ve probably seen “alternate history” stories. You know, where Europeans didn’t discover the New World until the 19th century, or t…

Selective control in autonomous AI systems: Why governing every decision breaks autonomy—and how runtime control actually works at scale

Modernity lays at your feet hundreds if not thousands of tools to make our lives cleaner, smoother, and more efficient.

If you’ve ever run a game server or used BitTorrent, you probably know that life is easier if your router supports UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). This is a fairly old tech — created by…

We’re all used to it by now, but I’d just like to reflect on how insanely power-packed lithium ion batteries are, and everything that’s afforded us. I’m trying to think of a gadget, a hobby, or nea…

It’s “phase two” of the AI boom, and the claws are out. Back at the tail end of 2024, I wrote these words: “2025 will not be the year AI agents take off.  As the bloom came …

Core ideas behind programming patterns

Python library chardet sparks debate over AI rewrites, MIT relicensing, and LGPL, raising legal, ethical, and governance challenges in open source.

On March 26, Addy Osmani and I are hosting the third O'Reilly AI Codecon, and this time we're taking on the question of what software craftsmanship looks like

In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.

Investigation of the ground pillars for a well-lived life, and how the open web can help us with that.

Or, how to lie with numeric affordances

The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a...

Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking.

Sam Henri Gold is a product design engineer building playful, useful software.

A person in a checkered blazer interacts with a floating digital interface above a tablet Introduction When it comes to accessibility management, success is...