Chris Smith
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achrissmith.bsky.social
Chris Smith
@achrissmith.bsky.social
I post snarky things about software.
Just keep reading this until it sinks in.

> Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]
www.africa.upenn.edu
January 19, 2026 at 6:55 PM
I don’t watch sports ball very often. But when I do, it’s to watch the Sea Hawks dominate the 49ers.
January 18, 2026 at 3:54 AM
Look, I’m a fan of diversity. And appreciate the new perspectives people from other backgrounds bring to the workplace. But I don’t think enough is said about the mental fortitude it takes to not right-click and correct “spelling errors” of people who use “specialised” and “colour”.
January 16, 2026 at 4:42 PM
Thanks, bro!
January 16, 2026 at 1:19 AM
RTO Hell: you are spending 2hrs a day commuting to an office, and your primary interaction is listening to the guy a few desks over getting paged every 20 minutes.
January 15, 2026 at 11:28 PM
Yeah. This is kinda embarrassing.
January 15, 2026 at 3:10 AM
I still mourn the loss of Twitter. It took years of cultivating that follow list. But I felt that I had found my tribe. And enjoyed a gentle sense of connection to folks who struck the right balance of professionalism with “posting snarky shit” about software.

BlueSky will get there eventually.
January 15, 2026 at 12:40 AM
Looks like it's time to pack it in for the day.
January 13, 2026 at 3:10 AM
Seems like in the era of AI-powered development, "the 12 factor app" will be replaced with "the 12 pre-submit hooks" to ensure your agents stay on the rails.

If someone has a good laundry list of dev infrastructure to ensure a high-quality web app, I'd love to see it.
January 13, 2026 at 1:32 AM
Insight from my 9yo:

“The most worthless invention in the universe would be a pedal-powered wheelchair.”

… no notes.
January 11, 2026 at 1:15 AM
Dearest test runner, “770031000000 nanoseconds” isn’t quite the flex you think it is.
January 9, 2026 at 2:49 AM
For all the people saying that LLMs are shifting the industry such that code reviews and understanding how things work is more important than knowing the syntax of a language… what if I told you that was _always_ the case?
January 8, 2026 at 5:36 AM
Signs you’re on a toxic team #1362:

When you hear a colleague is leaving the company, and your reaction is that of jealousy.
January 6, 2026 at 5:46 PM
Wasn’t like, the world supposed to end by now? Why the heck do I need to deal with 2026.
December 23, 2025 at 4:31 AM
I know it’s cliche as a neck beard to be saying this… but it still is pretty awesome when I write some code that replies on functional programming. There is an elegance to function composition that cannot be beat!
December 20, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Years ago I was talking to a more grizzled engineer than me. And he talked about the importance of having tight deliverables, so that in his words he wouldn’t be tempted to “tend to the codebase like a garden”.

I think that concept really shines through in this post:

gricha.dev/blog/the-hig...
The highest quality codebase
Blog post
gricha.dev
December 11, 2025 at 8:37 PM
The thing they don’t teach you in parenting school is that those holiday concerts your kid is in? They are TERRIBLE. Like seriously. And apparently _you_ are the asshole for pointing this out to them.
December 11, 2025 at 3:45 AM
“Bro, <LLM Model> is so June, 2025. AKA bullshit. You gotta get <Other LLM Model>, it’s like way better when you consider <absolutely no evidence>.”
December 10, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Let us have a moment of silence for the brave pumpkins, who sacrificed themselves so that we may enjoy a post-meal pie.
November 27, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Life pro tip: you’ll be able to remember the people in your spouse’s work stories by giving them colorful nicknames.
November 22, 2025 at 3:17 AM
The easiest way to measure <X> about a company, is to see how engineers spend their time on-call.
November 19, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Status Code 4XX, for when you want to make it clear that it’s more of a “you problem”.
November 18, 2025 at 12:31 AM
LLM: please do the same thing again, but in such a way it doesn’t fall with ERR_TOO_MANY_OUTPUT_TOKENS.
November 16, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Are the people on LinkedIn for real?
November 15, 2025 at 2:24 AM