Notes on Building Software That Lasts

Software Development Jul 14, 2026

Modernizing a legacy PHP app costs less than a rewrite and carries far less risk, because you keep the product earning while you fix it. Here is what actually drives the cost.

Expert Opinion Jul 14, 2026

Two error signatures sat on the same line of code. They looked like one problem. They were two, with opposite fixes. One needed me to stop throwing, the other needed me to catch and retry, and the fix that would have made the log quiet fastest was the worst option available.

Frontend Engineering Jul 10, 2026

Redux does not get slow on its own. It gets slow when the store holds too much, components re-render on data they do not use, and selectors recompute. Here is how I fix each one.

Architecture Jul 10, 2026

Reliable email is never about sending the message. It is about the queue around it. Here is how I build PHP email systems that stop being the thing that silently breaks.

Expert Opinion Jul 09, 2026

AI made writing code cheap this year. It did not make verifying code cheap. The bottleneck moved one step downstream, to the part nobody automated: deciding whether the code is correct, safe, and worth keeping.

Software Development Jul 03, 2026

I made a new UI the default for one account and left everyone else on the old one, from the same deploy. The difference was one database row. Here is how I built the smallest feature-flag system that has the right shape, and the design calls behind it.

Software Development Jun 30, 2026

A rewrite is the riskiest way to fix a legacy PHP app, and usually the slowest. Here is how I modernize a codebase that makes money, in place, without a rewrite and without taking it down.

Command Line Jun 28, 2026

Production is broken and staging is full of unfinished work. You cannot merge staging to ship the fix. Here is the hotfix-branch workflow I use to release only the fix, in minutes.

Expert Opinion Jun 26, 2026

A principal engineer told me one to three seniors with AI can replace a team of juniors. He was right, and he stopped one step short. AI scales execution. It does not scale judgment.