https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ Technology insights, startup advisory, and lessons learned from 45+ years in the industry. en-us Sat, 18 Apr 2026 06:41:24 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/rpb-400.png https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/qr-code-industry-shakedown/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/qr-code-industry-shakedown/ The QR code generator industry charges subscription fees for an open standard that takes three lines of code to implement. Dynamic QR codes are redirect servers that create artificial dependency — cancel and your printed materials stop working. A $13 billion market built on consumer confusion and dark patterns. Contrarian Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/esign-audit-theater/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/esign-audit-theater/ The e-signature industry has conflated legally valid with cryptographically provable for 25 years. Courts are beginning to notice the difference, and so should you. Contrarian Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/humanoid-robots-hidden-labor/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/humanoid-robots-hidden-labor/ Humanoid robot companies hide human teleoperation behind impressive demos. The Mechanical Turk pattern is 256 years old and still working. AI & Tech Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/brex-fintech-reckoning/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/brex-fintech-reckoning/ Capital One acquires Brex for $5.15 billion, 58% below peak valuation. The deal reveals what happens when zero-interest-rate valuations meet normal market conditions. Startup Advisory Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-calendar-hidden-costs/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-calendar-hidden-costs/ AI calendar tools promise to eliminate scheduling friction. But removing that friction removes something valuable: control over your priorities and time. Contrarian Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/chatgpt-health-dr-google/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/chatgpt-health-dr-google/ OpenAI's ChatGPT Health promises to improve on Dr. Google with AI-powered medical guidance. But 56-72% accuracy isn't good enough when health is on the line. AI & Tech Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-trust-hierarchy/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-trust-hierarchy/ How to architect AI trust with deterministic guardrails: Pydantic validators, Redis kill switches, and OAuth scopes. A four-level framework from building financial AI. AI & Tech Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-code-review-bottleneck/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-code-review-bottleneck/ AI coding assistants generate code faster than ever, but PR review has become the new bottleneck. Teams deliver slower despite individual developers moving faster. Programming Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/quantum-crypto-threat-overblown/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/quantum-crypto-threat-overblown/ Quantum computing won't break cryptocurrency for 15-30 years. Meanwhile, social engineering, bridge exploits, and insider threats stole $3.4 billion in 2025. Crypto & Blockchain Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/google-search-decline-overstated/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/google-search-decline-overstated/ The narrative that Google Search is dying ignores what it's still best at and where alternatives actually win. Contrarian Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fintech-winter-thaw/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fintech-winter-thaw/ The fintech funding winter wasn't death - it was a reset. Capital is flowing to companies with real traction and clear unit economics. The 2021 playbook is dead. Startup Advisory Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-regulation-war/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-regulation-war/ California, Texas, and 36 other states passed AI legislation. Now a federal executive order threatens preemption. What happens next defines AI governance in America. AI & Tech Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/death-of-fullstack/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/death-of-fullstack/ The full-stack developer myth is dying. Modern systems require deep specialization that generalists can't provide. Programming Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/chatgpt-replaces-first-meeting/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/chatgpt-replaces-first-meeting/ Prospects now research with AI before talking to sales. Your digital presence is your first impression. AI & Tech Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-coding-assistant-collapse/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-coding-assistant-collapse/ AI coding assistants promised 55% productivity gains but METR found developers are 19% slower. Quality plateaued in 2025, technical debt exploded 8x, and the gap between benchmarks and production reality is too wide to sustain. AI & Tech Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/vibe-coding-comprehension-debt/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/vibe-coding-comprehension-debt/ Vibe coding promises faster development, but comprehension debt is the hidden cost. When developers ship code they don't understand, maintenance nightmares follow. Programming Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bootstrap-vs-vc-2026/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bootstrap-vs-vc-2026/ Down-rounds hit 15.9% in 2025. AI takes 33% of VC funding. The 2026 math favors bootstrap more than any time since the pre-VC era. Here's how to decide. Startup Advisory Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rag-vs-fine-tuning-enterprise/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rag-vs-fine-tuning-enterprise/ Fine-tuning creates models that know things. RAG creates systems that look things up. For enterprises where knowledge changes faster than training cycles, RAG wins on cost, velocity, and auditability. AI & Tech Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-demo-to-production-gap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-demo-to-production-gap/ 42% of companies abandon AI initiatives before production. MIT research shows 95% of AI pilots fail. The demo-to-production gap is systematic and predictable. AI & Tech Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/microservices-decision-guide/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/microservices-decision-guide/ Should you use microservices or a monolith? This canonical guide provides a decision matrix, extraction checklist, and honest evaluation criteria based on team size, scaling needs, and operational capacity. Programming Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-burnout-shadow/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-burnout-shadow/ Research shows nearly three-quarters of founders experience 'shadow burnout' while exceeding business targets. Structural causes and sustainable leadership from 45 years in tech. Founder & Career Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-startup-collapse-2027/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-startup-collapse-2027/ The AI gold rush is ending. 90% of AI startups will fail by 2027 due to commoditized infrastructure, no differentiation, and the gap between demos and production. The warning signs are already here. Startup Advisory Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/junior-developer-extinction/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/junior-developer-extinction/ Entry-level software engineering positions have dropped 60% since 2022. A Harvard study found companies cut junior hiring before AI can replace those roles. Founder & Career Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/test-coverage-lie/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/test-coverage-lie/ Test coverage metrics measure code execution, not verification. High coverage with weak assertions is worse than lower coverage with strong assertions - it provides false confidence. Contrarian Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/45-years-in-tech/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/45-years-in-tech/ From programming at age 7, to seeing the world in the Navy, to running 3,000+ AWS instances. A journey through four decades of building systems, patents, and startups. Founder & Career Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/building-for-government/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/building-for-government/ Government procurement is maddening. Security requirements are exhaustive. The pace is glacial. But when your software helps rescue people at sea, you understand why it has to be this way. Founder & Career Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/make-over-modern-builds/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/make-over-modern-builds/ A contrarian defense of Make (1976) over modern JavaScript build tools. Make is boring, understood, and still works. Modern tools are complex, break often, and solve problems Make already solved. Programming Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agentic-ai-failure-rate/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agentic-ai-failure-rate/ Gartner predicts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027. The reasons are predictable: unclear ROI, agent washing, and deployments without governance. AI & Tech Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-postgres-wins/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-postgres-wins/ PostgreSQL dominates the 2025 StackOverflow survey with 55.6% market share. It's not hype - it's decades of reliability, extensibility, and solving real problems without creating new ones. Programming Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-productivity-paradox/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-productivity-paradox/ METR's randomized controlled trial found experienced developers are 19% slower with AI coding tools. The twist: they believed they were 20% faster. Contrarian Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-code-no-memory/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-code-no-memory/ AI coding assistants are stateless. They don't remember your architectural decisions, past bugs, or team conventions. This creates a specific kind of technical debt—code that looks correct but violates principles you established years ago. AI & Tech Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/gpu-shortage-aftermath/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/gpu-shortage-aftermath/ The AI boom created a GPU shortage that's reshaping how companies think about compute access and infrastructure. AI & Tech Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/3000-aws-instances-real-cost/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/3000-aws-instances-real-cost/ Direct experience running 3,000+ AWS instances. Hidden costs (egress, support tiers), optimization strategies, and why 78% of companies waste 21-50% of their cloud spend. Founder & Career Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-video-dirty-secret/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-video-dirty-secret/ AI video generation looks impressive in demos because those clips are selected from dozens of attempts. In production, expect 3-5 generations per usable clip, 15-20% cleanup time, and quality that isn't broadcast-ready. AI & Tech Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/static-sites-still-win/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/static-sites-still-win/ Static sites load faster, cost less, and break less than dynamic alternatives. Here's why the simplest web architecture keeps winning against modern complexity. Programming Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-content-farms/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-content-farms/ AI content farms have flooded search results with machine-generated text optimized for ranking, not accuracy. By 2026, genuine expertise gets buried under industrial-scale content pollution. AI & Tech Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/observability-theater/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/observability-theater/ The observability market will hit $172 billion by 2035, yet alert fatigue is epidemic and engineers spend 40% of time on tooling. Dashboards create illusion of control while real understanding requires reading code. Programming Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/assembly-never-left/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/assembly-never-left/ Assembly language isn't a relic - it's essential for voice AI, cryptography, and performance-critical paths. When 'compilers optimize better than humans' is marketing vs reality. Programming Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agentic-ai-is-automation/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agentic-ai-is-automation/ Strip away the marketing and 'agentic AI' is workflow automation with LLM steps. Useful, but not the revolution the vendors are selling. AI & Tech Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/pivot-that-kills/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/pivot-that-kills/ Most pivots destroy more value than they create. Knowing when to iterate versus pivot is a survival skill. Startup Advisory Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-noise-wrong-problem/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-noise-wrong-problem/ Speech recognition vendors have spent decades perfecting noise filtering. Research shows it often hurts accuracy. A different approach to acoustic intelligence is needed. AI & Tech Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/interview-alternatives-that-work/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/interview-alternatives-that-work/ Evidence-based hiring methods that predict engineering success: structured interviews, work samples, and behavioral questions. Based on Sackett 2022 meta-analysis. Founder & Career Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/sqlite-software-done-right/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/sqlite-software-done-right/ SQLite runs on more devices than any software in history. After 45 years watching technology disappoint, here's why SQLite is the rare project that delivered on its promises. Programming Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/serverless-was-lie/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/serverless-was-lie/ Serverless promised to eliminate infrastructure concerns. Instead it created new problems: cold starts, vendor lock-in, debugging nightmares, and costs that spiral at scale. Containers won. Kubernetes won. Serverless is retreating to niche use cases. Programming Sun, 09 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-self-awareness-advantage/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-self-awareness-advantage/ Self-awareness isn't a trait you have or lack—it's a practice. The specific habits that enable honest self-evaluation, from feedback systems to reflection rituals. Founder & Career Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/mvp-excuse/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/mvp-excuse/ MVP was meant to be a discipline for validated learning, not permission to ship half-finished software. The corruption of the concept has given founders an excuse to skip the hard work of building something worth testing. Startup Advisory Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/open-source-maintainer-burnout/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/open-source-maintainer-burnout/ Kubernetes Ingress NGINX will receive no security patches after March 2026 due to maintainer burnout. 60% of open source maintainers work unpaid. Critical infrastructure is dying from neglect. Programming Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/hiring-senior-engineers/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/hiring-senior-engineers/ The senior engineering interview process tests preparation, not ability. 63% of seniors get downleveled. Here's what actually predicts success and how to hire differently. Founder & Career Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-rewrites-succeed/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-rewrites-succeed/ Most rewrites fail, but some succeed. The patterns that separate the 10% from the 90%: scope discipline, team continuity, good-enough architecture, and political protection. Programming Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/speech-to-speech-revolution/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/speech-to-speech-revolution/ Speech-to-speech AI has crossed the 300ms latency threshold where interactions feel like genuine conversation. What this means for voice interfaces and where it still fails. AI & Tech Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/llms-have-no-intent/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/llms-have-no-intent/ LLMs are amoral pattern engines that will confidently lie because confident lies were in the training data. Understanding this predicts where they'll fail—and why you can't trust their self-reports. AI & Tech Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/compuserve-platform-lessons/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/compuserve-platform-lessons/ CompuServe had first-mover advantage, loyal users, and great technology. They still lost to AOL. The lessons about platform economics, business model evolution, and corporate ownership remain relevant today. Tech History Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/defi-never-finance/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/defi-never-finance/ DeFi advocates claim they're building the future of finance while removing everything that makes finance work: recourse, recovery, accountability, and insurance. Billions lost to hacks prove the point. Crypto & Blockchain Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-saas-pricing-lie/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-saas-pricing-lie/ Per-seat pricing is a legacy model from when humans were the unit of work. AI is exposing the lie: vendors want seats, not efficiency. Here's what's replacing it. Startup Advisory Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-agents-wont-replace/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-agents-wont-replace/ AI agents have real limits. They won't replace judgment, empathy, expertise, or physical labor. Understanding these boundaries is essential for successful deployment. AI & Tech Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-outsourcing-boomerang/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-outsourcing-boomerang/ Only 23% of offshore partnerships succeed. Hidden costs in rework, management overhead, and quality remediation often exceed what internal development would have cost. Here's why the boomerang always returns. Startup Advisory Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-to-kill-company/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-to-kill-company/ Knowing when to shut down is harder than knowing when to start. The sunk cost fallacy kills more founders than failure. Startup Advisory Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rust-wont-replace-c/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rust-wont-replace-c/ Rust is safer than C. That's not enough. Trillions of lines of C are in production. The learning curve is brutal. Safety-critical domains require certified toolchains. Technology quality doesn't drive technology adoption—economics does. Programming Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/meetings-are-bugs/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/meetings-are-bugs/ Unproductive meetings cost $37 billion annually. They're not collaboration - they're organizational bugs. Here's how to diagnose the root cause and fix the process. Founder & Career Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/lecun-bet-against-llms/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/lecun-bet-against-llms/ Yann LeCun is betting that large language models are a dead end for AGI. His new startup AMI Labs pursues world models instead. Why his contrarian vision might prove correct. AI & Tech Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/exit-planning-gap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/exit-planning-gap/ 48% of founders planning to sell have no exit strategy. M&A accounts for 85%+ of VC-backed exits. The founders who get the best outcomes planned for them. Startup Advisory Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-pilots-fail/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-pilots-fail/ MIT-linked studies show 95% of generative AI pilots failed to generate meaningful business impact. The failure patterns and how to avoid them. AI & Tech Sat, 23 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-sovereignty-illusion/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-sovereignty-illusion/ Every nation wants AI sovereignty. Only the US and China have anything close to it. The rest are buying sovereignty as a service from the countries they're trying to escape. AI & Tech Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/stopped-giving-advice/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/stopped-giving-advice/ Unsolicited advice fails 99% of the time. The gap between the giver's context and the receiver's reality is where well-meaning guidance goes to die. Questions over answers, options over recommendations, patterns over prescriptions. Founder & Career Thu, 21 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-standup-theater/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-standup-theater/ Only 1 in 4 teams keep standups under 15 minutes. The ceremony has consumed the purpose. Here's how standups became theater and what actually works instead. Contrarian Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/drone-delivery-fantasy/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/drone-delivery-fantasy/ Despite $600M funding rounds and $27B market projections, drone delivery faces physics constraints that money can't solve: 20-minute battery life, 5-pound payloads, 10 hours of flyable weather per day. Contrarian Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-vendor-lying/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-vendor-lying/ How to see through AI vendor marketing: why demos don't match reality, how accuracy numbers lie, and what questions to ask before buying enterprise AI. AI & Tech Sun, 17 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/async-beats-meetings/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/async-beats-meetings/ Most meetings are waste disguised as work. The information could have been an email. Teams that default to async outperform teams that fill calendars with meetings. Founder & Career Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/browser-is-sandbox/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/browser-is-sandbox/ Modern browsers run untrusted code from millions of sources daily and contain threats successfully. Browser-based applications inherit security properties that native apps can't match. Programming Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/microservices-mistake/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/microservices-mistake/ A monolith with good tests is better than 50 microservices with distributed debugging nightmares. When to use microservices: when you've proven you need them. Contrarian Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-coding-patterns-that-work/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-coding-patterns-that-work/ AI coding tools made experienced developers 19% slower in METR's study. But clear patterns emerge for when they help: unfamiliar territory, boilerplate, documentation, and exploration. AI & Tech Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/prompt-engineering-bubble/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/prompt-engineering-bubble/ Prompt engineering as a career is a bubble. As models improve, the skill becomes less valuable, not more. AI & Tech Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/grace-hopper-nanosecond/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/grace-hopper-nanosecond/ Grace Hopper's famous nanosecond wire demonstration—and why understanding physical constraints still matters for every system we build today. Tech History Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/hidden-cost-ai-calendar-assistants/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/hidden-cost-ai-calendar-assistants/ AI calendar assistants claim massive time savings, but rigorous research reveals a productivity paradox: tools that make you feel faster actually make you slower while introducing hidden costs. AI & Tech Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/msnbc-cms-before-cms/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/msnbc-cms-before-cms/ In 1996 at MSNBC, I built Workbench - a content management system for editors, copy editors, and photo teams before the term CMS existed. Workflow automation for non-technical users. Tech History Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/friend-got-hacked/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/friend-got-hacked/ A BBS sysop friend got hacked through social engineering in 1987. Watching it happen taught me that the most dangerous vulnerabilities aren't in code - they're in assumptions about trust. Tech History Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/open-source-isnt-free/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/open-source-isnt-free/ Open source software has a price tag of $0 and a total cost of ownership that can dwarf commercial alternatives. The 'free' in free software refers to freedom, not cost. Contrarian Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/data-lake-not-needed/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/data-lake-not-needed/ Data lakes have become resume-driven development. 85% of projects fail, most turning into data swamps. A well-structured PostgreSQL database handles most real-world use cases. Programming Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/safe-vs-priced-round/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/safe-vs-priced-round/ Despite the comforting acronym, a SAFE is often anything but safe for a founder. Learn why priced rounds offer better protection for your cap table. Startup Advisory Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/code-review-that-works/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/code-review-that-works/ Only 15% of code review comments relate to bugs. Here's how to make the other 85% of review time count: size limits, SLAs, automation, and focused feedback. Programming Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-accuracy-lies/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-accuracy-lies/ ASR accuracy claims are based on ideal conditions. Real-world performance with background noise, accents, and domain jargon drops 30-50%. What AMBIE taught us about honest metrics. AI & Tech Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bootstrapped-companies-win/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bootstrapped-companies-win/ VC funding creates misaligned incentives. Bootstrapped companies often build better products and more sustainable businesses. Startup Advisory Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-slack-trap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-slack-trap/ Slack users spend 1 hour 42 minutes daily on the platform. Power users hit 3.1 hours. The communication tool designed to save time became the biggest drain on it. Founder & Career Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-hallucinations-enterprise/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-hallucinations-enterprise/ Knowledge workers spend 4.3 hours per week fact-checking AI outputs. 47% of enterprise users made major decisions based on hallucinated content. The costs are mounting. AI & Tech Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/sysop-lessons-platform-moderation/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/sysop-lessons-platform-moderation/ Running BBSs in the 1980s meant handling hardware, limited connections, users gaming the system, moderation, and community - with no cloud, no scaling, no support tickets. Lessons that still apply. Tech History Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/domain-specific-asr/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/domain-specific-asr/ Legal terminology, manufacturing jargon, call center scripts - each requires specialized training. The myth of 'one model to rule them all.' AI & Tech Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/series-a-trap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/series-a-trap/ Series A funding often kills more companies than it saves. The pressure to scale before ready destroys sustainable businesses. Startup Advisory Sat, 10 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/architecture-decisions-kill-startups/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/architecture-decisions-kill-startups/ The architecture mistakes that kill startups: premature microservices, wrong database choices, god objects, missing observability, and more. Patterns that repeat across failed companies. Startup Advisory Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/dotcom-crash-inside/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/dotcom-crash-inside/ First-person account of running Core Logic Software during the 2000-2002 dot-com crash. When the NASDAQ fell 78% and 4,854 internet companies died, what it looked like from inside the ecosystem. Tech History Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/uss-missouri-drone-surrender/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/uss-missouri-drone-surrender/ During the Gulf War, Iraqi troops surrendered to the USS Missouri's Pioneer UAV - the first surrender to a drone in history. Connecting military autonomous systems history to today's AI debates. Tech History Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-i-never-use-orms/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-i-never-use-orms/ ORMs hide the database until they don't, create performance traps, and solve the wrong problem. SQL is the better abstraction. A contrarian take from 30 years of database work. Contrarian Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-wrapper-dropshipping/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-wrapper-dropshipping/ The AI wrapper economy mirrors dropshipping: low barriers to entry, no moat, platform dependency. With 90% failure rates and platforms absorbing successful features, the model is broken by design. AI & Tech Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/security-breaches-dont-matter/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/security-breaches-dont-matter/ The security industry profits from fear. Most breaches have minimal impact while companies overspend on exotic threats. Contrarian Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-due-diligence-checklist/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-due-diligence-checklist/ A comprehensive checklist for evaluating startup technology: architecture, code quality, infrastructure, team, and security. Based on patterns from evaluating dozens of startups. Startup Advisory Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/small-language-models/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/small-language-models/ Gartner predicts task-specific AI models will be used 3x more than general-purpose LLMs by 2027. Why latency, cost, and privacy push enterprises toward SLMs. AI & Tech Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/local-first-renaissance/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/local-first-renaissance/ Local-first software puts your data on your device first. The cloud becomes optional. As CRDTs mature, the best apps feel like we've rediscovered something we forgot. Programming Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-senior-engineer-plateau/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-senior-engineer-plateau/ Only 10-15% of engineers reach Staff level. The rest face a choice the industry pretends doesn't exist: stay technical and plateau, or abandon what you're good at for management. Founder & Career Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/dependency-is-debt/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/dependency-is-debt/ Dependencies are liabilities, not assets. From left-pad breaking the internet to Log4j's endemic vulnerability, every package you add expands your attack surface and maintenance burden. Programming Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-agents-cant-remember/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-agents-cant-remember/ Current AI agents don't learn - they retrieve. New research on reinforcement learning for memory could change that. Understanding why your AI agent keeps making the same mistakes. AI & Tech Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/computers-are-cheap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/computers-are-cheap/ Why premature optimization wastes developer time. The economics of knowing when code is good enough and when performance actually matters. Programming Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-art-good-for-artists/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-art-good-for-artists/ The panic over AI image generation misses how it's actually helping working artists be more productive and creative. Contrarian Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/high-velocity-team-anatomy/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/high-velocity-team-anatomy/ The traits that high-performing engineering teams share have nothing to do with methodology certifications. Small teams, clear ownership, direct communication, and outcome focus. Programming Fri, 07 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/night-we-lost-production/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/night-we-lost-production/ The pattern behind production outages: the 2am alert, the escalating panic, the decision that makes it worse. What separates teams that recover from teams that don't. Contrarian Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/european-vc-hype-reality/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/european-vc-hype-reality/ European AI funding doubled in 2025. But 90% of startups fail and 95% of AI pilots never deliver ROI. What the funding headlines don't tell you. Startup Advisory Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/web-spy-personal-crawler/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/web-spy-personal-crawler/ I built Web Spy - a desktop app that crawled and cached websites for offline reading. This was before HTTrack, before Pocket, before Instapaper. Never shipped it. Tech History Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/those-old-programming-books/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/those-old-programming-books/ Dog-eared, coffee-stained, held together by stubbornness and nostalgia. The programming books from the late 1970s that started a 45-year journey in technology. Tech History Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-cofounder-burnout/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-cofounder-burnout/ Technical co-founders face unique pressures: irreversible architecture decisions, constant translation duty, recognition gaps, and always-on responsibility. 54% of founders burned out last year - for CTOs it's likely higher. Founder & Career Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/documentation-as-product/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/documentation-as-product/ Documentation quality determines adoption more than feature completeness. Tom Preston-Werner's Readme Driven Development and the open source community show how doc-first thinking produces better software. Programming Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/solo-founder-loneliness/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/solo-founder-loneliness/ Solo founders face psychological costs the startup world rarely acknowledges. The isolation isn't weakness—it's physics. Startup Advisory Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-bubble-deflation/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/ai-bubble-deflation/ Drawing parallels between the 2000 dot-com crash and today's AI investment frenzy. Why the current AI correction will be a deflation rather than a catastrophic burst. AI & Tech Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-microservices-make-sense/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/when-microservices-make-sense/ Microservices succeed when you have the right prerequisites: team scale, deployment independence, scaling needs, and operational maturity. Here's how to tell if they're right for you. Programming Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/my-crawler-crashed-los-alamos/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/my-crawler-crashed-los-alamos/ How a homemade web crawler in 1993 crashed a Los Alamos server, the birth of robots.txt, and why AI companies are breaking the web etiquette that held for 30 years. Tech History Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/startup-metrics-theater/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/startup-metrics-theater/ Vanity metrics like DAU and total downloads create illusions of progress while hiding real problems. The metrics that predict survival - retention, churn, unit economics - often hurt to look at. Startup Advisory Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/c-was-last-good-language/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/c-was-last-good-language/ Why modern languages prioritize developer experience over runtime efficiency. The trade-offs we accepted and forgot. Where Rust tries to have it both ways. Programming Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/text-adventures-taught-me-everything/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/text-adventures-taught-me-everything/ How text adventure games like Zork shaped my understanding of software design, interface thinking, and the power of constraints to fuel creativity. Tech History Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/remote-work-made-us-worse/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/remote-work-made-us-worse/ Remote work traded visible costs for invisible ones. Knowledge transfer, mentorship, and collaboration all suffered. Programming Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/multimodal-ai-overhyped/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/multimodal-ai-overhyped/ Multimodal AI sits at peak hype on Gartner's 2025 cycle. But 80% of pilots fail to scale beyond testing. The gap between benchmark performance and production reality is where projects go to die. AI & Tech Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/patent-strategy-founder/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/patent-strategy-founder/ When patents matter (defensive portfolios, M&A leverage, licensing revenue) and when they're a distraction. The top 10 AI patent holders control nearly half of industry IP. Founder & Career Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/serverless-done-right/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/serverless-done-right/ Serverless works for event-driven, bursty, stateless workloads. Here's how to avoid cold start pain, manage state, choose the right granularity, and know when containers are better. Programming Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/users-dont-care-architecture/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/users-dont-care-architecture/ The graveyard is full of startups with beautiful architecture and zero traction. 70% of failed startups scaled prematurely. Ship something simple, learn what users want, iterate fast. Startup Advisory Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/mutation-testing-primer/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/mutation-testing-primer/ Mutation testing answers what coverage can't: do your tests actually catch bugs? Learn how to use mutation testing tools to find the gaps in your test suite and write tests that genuinely verify correctness. Programming Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/layer-tax/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/layer-tax/ Every abstraction layer has a cost. Benchmarks showing the real price of convenience from someone who built fast systems in the 90s and slow ones today. Programming Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/strawberry-tokenization-problem/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/strawberry-tokenization-problem/ LLMs confidently say strawberry has two R's because they've never seen letters—only tokens. This tokenization blindness predicts where AI will fail. AI & Tech Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/compuserve-was-internet/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/compuserve-was-internet/ CompuServe pioneered email, forums, and chat for 3 million users before the web. The community-building lessons from that era—invested moderators, friction as a feature, human-scale communities—remain relevant today. Tech History Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/crypto-is-bad/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/crypto-is-bad/ Environmental destruction, greater fool economics, regulatory arbitrage, and ransomware's favorite payment method. The SEC was right all along. Crypto & Blockchain Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/inventions-i-never-shipped/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/inventions-i-never-shipped/ Over 45 years, I noticed a pattern: I keep building things that later become billion-dollar companies. This is less about timing and more about recognizing when something you built for yourself might matter to others. Founder & Career Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/best-code-was-deleted/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/best-code-was-deleted/ The hardest skill in software engineering isn't writing code - it's knowing when to delete it. Stories of systems that improved by subtraction. Programming Sat, 07 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fidonet-before-internet/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fidonet-before-internet/ FidoNet was a global network connecting thousands of BBSs via scheduled phone calls. Email, newsgroups, file distribution - everything we associate with the internet existed first on FidoNet. Tech History Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bbs-door-games-golden-age/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bbs-door-games-golden-age/ Trade Wars, Legend of the Red Dragon, Barren Realms Elite - BBS door games created the template for online gaming. First-person perspective from a SysOp who ran them. Tech History Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/navy-taught-me-perspective/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/navy-taught-me-perspective/ I joined the Navy at 18 and got deployed to Desert Shield right out of boot camp. No combat heroics - just years on ships, traveling the world, and being part of the Missouri's decommissioning crew. That early exposure to scale shaped everything I've built since. Founder & Career Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-integration-tax/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-integration-tax/ Third-party API integration costs 56% more than initial estimates when you account for maintenance, breaking changes, and troubleshooting. The integration tax is real and ongoing. Programming Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-debt-people-problem/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-debt-people-problem/ Technical debt accumulates because of organizational dysfunction - pressure to ship, fear of refactoring, knowledge silos. Research shows 91% of CTOs cite it as a top challenge. Founder & Career Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rum-challenge-response-spam/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/rum-challenge-response-spam/ In the 1990s, I built RUM (Real User Mail) - a challenge-response system to fight spam. It worked. I never released it. Years later, the industry reinvented it. Tech History Sat, 03 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/blockchain-2018-lessons/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/blockchain-2018-lessons/ What I learned doing technical due diligence on blockchain startups seeking funding. The technology works - for exactly one use case. Everything else fails the database test. Crypto & Blockchain Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bbs-culture-silicon-valley-forgot/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/bbs-culture-silicon-valley-forgot/ 1980s BBS culture created authentic communities through sysop relationships and local control. Taiwan's PTT still has 1.5M active users. First-person perspective from a former SysOp. Tech History Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-privacy-paradox/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/asr-privacy-paradox/ ASR systems need training data. Training data contains sensitive audio. How federated learning solves the conflict between ML requirements and privacy laws. AI & Tech Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/netscape-ipo-changed-everything/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/netscape-ipo-changed-everything/ Netscape's IPO established the template for modern startup culture: growth over profit, massive early valuations, and boom-bust rhythms. Understanding that August day in 1995 helps explain why startups behave the way they do today. Tech History Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/speaker-diarization-hardest/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/speaker-diarization-hardest/ Why Zoom transcripts attribute quotes to the wrong people. The cocktail party problem isn't solved - it's hidden. Multi-device synchronization as a workaround. AI & Tech Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-icq-died/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/why-icq-died/ ICQ invented instant messaging and reached 100 million users. Then it died through corporate neglect, software bloat, and missed mobile transition. Every messaging platform today faces the same forces. Tech History Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/write-own-build-scripts/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/write-own-build-scripts/ Build tool complexity has gotten out of control. A 50-line shell script often does the job better than any framework. Programming Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/nft-crash-predictable/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/nft-crash-predictable/ NFTs crashed 95% from their 2021 peak. This was predictable from the start. Artificial scarcity of infinitely reproducible digital files was never going to hold value. Crypto & Blockchain Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/myth-overnight-success/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/myth-overnight-success/ Every startup success story is a lie by omission. The media compresses years of grinding, pivots, and near-death experiences into a simple narrative. The 'overnight success' takes 7-10 years on average. Startup Advisory Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/database-is-api/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/database-is-api/ For decades we buried databases under layers of abstraction. Tools like PostgREST and Supabase show that PostgreSQL with Row-Level Security is often the best API you'll ever write. Programming Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-interviews-broken/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/technical-interviews-broken/ Technical interviews optimize for competitive coding skills that rarely matter in actual work. What we should test instead - and how hiring could improve. Contrarian Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/engineers-own-build-system/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/engineers-own-build-system/ Build systems have become black boxes that nobody understands. When they break, teams are helpless. Here's the case for simpler builds that engineers actually control. Programming Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/board-doesnt-understand/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/board-doesnt-understand/ Most boards lack technical expertise to evaluate software companies. The abstraction gap, misaligned time horizons, and translation problems create systematic misunderstanding that leads to bad decisions. Startup Advisory Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/feature-flags-complexity/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/feature-flags-complexity/ Feature flags promised safe deployments but delivered hidden complexity. Research shows 73% never get removed, costing teams $125K+ yearly in maintenance overhead. Programming Sun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fire-first-engineer/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/fire-first-engineer/ Your first engineering hire was perfect for building the prototype. But scaling requires different skills. Knowing when that transition has happened—and acting on it—is one of the hardest decisions founders face. Startup Advisory Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/shareware-model-forgotten/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/shareware-model-forgotten/ Before SaaS and app stores, shareware let independent developers make money through an honor system. The model worked for decades and contains lessons about distribution, trust, and monetization that modern developers have forgotten. Tech History Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/operational-voice-intelligence/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/operational-voice-intelligence/ Radio traffic is operational intelligence that vanishes into air. This framework for voice AI captures, interprets, and acts on voice data in minutes instead of hours. AI & Tech Sat, 04 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-platform-trap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-platform-trap/ Platform dependency killed Apollo, PostMyParty, and hundreds of apps when Twitter, Reddit, and Meta changed their APIs. Platform risk is existential risk. Here's how to recognize and mitigate it. Startup Advisory Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/framework-treadmill/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/framework-treadmill/ The JavaScript framework ecosystem keeps solving the same problems with new syntax every 2-3 years. State management, routing, data fetching - we've reinvented these solutions dozens of times since 2010, and developers spend more time on the treadmill of relearning than actually building products. Programming Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/voice-ai-demo-production-gap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/voice-ai-demo-production-gap/ Voice AI demos work perfectly. Production deployments fail. After a decade building speech systems, here's why the gap exists and how to bridge it. AI & Tech Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/blockchain-solution-no-problem/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/blockchain-solution-no-problem/ Blockchain has been 'revolutionary' for 15 years without revolutionizing anything. Every enterprise blockchain quietly becomes a regular database. Crypto & Blockchain Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/product-stopped-growing/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/product-stopped-growing/ Stalled growth isn't terminal - it's diagnostic. Learn to distinguish segment saturation from product-market fit erosion from channel exhaustion, and respond appropriately. Founder & Career Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-ego-kills-startups/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/founder-ego-kills-startups/ Startups die from ego before they die from competition. Pride that can't hear feedback, founders who can't fire themselves, and the delusion that vision equals execution. 45 years of watching it happen. Contrarian Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/programming-before-google/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/programming-before-google/ Programming in the pre-internet era meant libraries, magazines, and BBSs. The struggle was the education - deep reading because you couldn't skim, memorization because lookup was expensive. Tech History Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/death-technical-blog/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/death-technical-blog/ Technical blog posts were searchable, skimmable, and copy-pasteable. Video tutorials are none of these. The shift happened for economic reasons, not educational ones. Contrarian Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/tech-debt-is-rot/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/tech-debt-is-rot/ Debt implies payback. You won't. It compounds faster than interest. Every startup that says 'we'll clean it up after we raise' never does. Contrarian Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/piracy-helped-technology/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/piracy-helped-technology/ Software piracy in the 80s and 90s built the networks, protocols, and communities that became legitimate tech infrastructure. BitTorrent, streaming, cloud storage - all have roots in the scene. Tech History Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/code-review-broken/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/code-review-broken/ Code review as practiced by most teams is a bottleneck that provides less value than we pretend. Small PRs, distributed reviewing, and time SLAs can fix it. Programming Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/i-work-faster-alone/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/i-work-faster-alone/ After 45 years in tech, I know I work faster alone. The collaboration-industrial complex says more interaction is always better. My shipped code says otherwise. Contrarian Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/my-first-computer/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/my-first-computer/ 1977 was the year everything started. The Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET created personal computing. What it was like to be seven years old, wanting one desperately. Tech History Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/gpu-democratization-nobody-talking/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/gpu-democratization-nobody-talking/ Alternative GPU clouds offer 50-80% savings over hyperscalers. The AI revolution is being democratized, but AWS would prefer you didn't know. Startup Advisory Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agile-is-cargo-cult/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/agile-is-cargo-cult/ Standups, sprints, and story points without the underlying values. How Agile became a certification industry that produces the opposite of agility. Contrarian Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/debugging-before-stackoverflow/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/debugging-before-stackoverflow/ Stack Overflow launched in 2008. For the first thirty years of my career, 'Google the error message' wasn't an option. The debugging skills that era required are different from what developers learn today. Tech History Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/myth-10x-engineer/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/myth-10x-engineer/ I've been called a 10x engineer - sometimes 20x. The variation in programmer productivity is real. But the way Silicon Valley uses the concept has damaged how organizations build teams. Contrarian Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/prodigy-dial-up-lessons/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/prodigy-dial-up-lessons/ Prodigy invested $1 billion building walls that collapsed when the open internet arrived. The pattern has repeated with every major walled garden since. Tech History Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-rewrite-trap/ https://roamingpigs.com/field-manual/the-rewrite-trap/ Software rewrites fail 90% of the time. The Netscape disaster proved it. Here's why incremental improvement beats the clean slate fantasy, and what to do instead. Programming Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000