The dashboard nobody looks at
Most dashboards are built during an incident and never opened again. A few are worth keeping, and they look different.
tech, developers, and the code underneath
78 pieces tagged craft,
from March 7, 2025 to September 28, 2026.
Most dashboards are built during an incident and never opened again. A few are worth keeping, and they look different.
Everyone agrees with the principle. Almost nobody has checked what their service can actually reach.
Specifications look impenetrable and follow strict conventions. Knowing the conventions makes them the best documentation available.
Half-completed migrations are the most expensive state a system can be in, and the most common one.
Integers, UUIDs, ULIDs, or something with meaning. The decision is permanent and it leaks into everything.
Six causes, ranked by how often they are the real problem, and the fix for each.
Your service dependency graph exists whether or not anyone has written it down. Writing it down takes an afternoon.
A request crosses a dozen components with a timeout each, and almost nobody has ever added them up.
Writing down what you tried is the cheapest debugging technique there is, and almost nobody does it.
Users cannot see your architecture. They can see the six seconds it takes to do the thing they came for.
Internal interfaces get none of the care external ones do, and they are the ones you'll live with longest.
Six lines at the top of a bash script are the difference between a tool and a trap.