The Best Code I Ever Wrote 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....
Barren Realms Elite and the Golden Age of BBS Door Games
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....
The Integration Tax: Every API Has a Price
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....
Technical Debt Is a People Problem, Not a Code 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....
I Solved Spam in the 90s (Nobody Cared)
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....
I Evaluated Dozens of Blockchain Startups in 2018
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....
Speaker Diarization: The Hardest Problem Nobody Talks About
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....
The NFT Crash Was 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....
Why Technical Interviews Test the Wrong Thing
Technical interviews optimize for competitive coding skills that rarely matter in actual work. What we should test instead - and how hiring could improve....
Why Engineers Should Own Their 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....
Feature Flags Are Technical Debt
Feature flags promised safe deployments but delivered hidden complexity. Research shows 73% never get removed, costing teams $125K+ yearly in maintenance overhead....
The Shareware Model Nobody Remembers
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 ...
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