Lessons from legacy codebases
Performance optimization is a tempting distraction. Every line of code that exists to optimize one specific case is a line that must be maintained and understood forever.
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The maintenance burden of frameworks
Most codebases grow in directions their authors never anticipated. The pressure to optimize early is real, but constraints often produce more elegant solutions than freedom ever could.
From the archive
Naming is one of the hardest problems in software, yet we spend less time on it than we should. Let's talk about why it matters and how to get better at it.
About this site
I write about software architecture, distributed systems, and the craft of programming. Posts are infrequent but hopefully worth the wait.
Thoughts on systems. Updated sporadically.
Elsewhere
Occasional writing on design topics. Past essays here.