Posts Tagged "Philosophy"

Gambling on Failure

Most people gamble on success — they assume the thing will work, and they're genuinely surprised when it doesn't. A tiny, birdlike kung fu master taught me to gamble on failure instead. Expect every move to be blocked, and win anyway. It turns out to be the same discipline that keeps systems alive at 2 AM.

Don't Paint Yourself Into a Corner

Larry Wall built Perl around a principle: no unnecessary limitations. Most of the limitations we build into our own code aren't necessary either — they're laziness wearing the costume of caution, and every one is a wet patch of floor between you and the door. Stop boxing in your future self.

C-Style Thinking vs Go-Style Thinking

You can identify a programmer's native language by the tools they build. Go and Perl natives build tools with sane defaults that work out of the box. C and C++ natives build tools that require you to understand the entire problem space before you can do anything at all.

'Can' vs 'Does'

The difference between a system that can fail and a system that does fail is time. Murphy's Law is not a joke. It is a design constraint. Every moving part you add is another bet against the house, and the house always wins.

The Best Dog Trainer in the World - Or Why Getting Better Isn't Helping

When something has been failing for a while despite competent people working on it, the problem is almost certainly not competence. Before you optimize, ask yourself whether you are training a dog or a cat.

FITFO - Figure It The (Fun?) Out

A reflection on how learning to program as a small business owner built the FITFO skill -- the ability to figure things out from scratch -- which became the foundation of a DevOps career.