Alexander The >
@amurmann.com
Pinned
Alexander The >
@amurmann.com
· Nov 15
"You can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can’t become a German, an Italian. But anyone, from any corner of the earth, can come live in America and become an American." - Ronald Reagan
I stumbled over this piece I wrote ten years ago on my GitHub account. I was surprised how well it held up and re-published it on my blog: amurmann.com/posts/good-d...
Good Developer, Bad Developer
Good Developer, Bad Developer This document is heavily influenced by a similar document Ben Horrowitz wrote many years ago for product managers and that was also printed in his book “The Hard Thing Ab...
amurmann.com
June 3, 2025 at 1:47 AM
I stumbled over this piece I wrote ten years ago on my GitHub account. I was surprised how well it held up and re-published it on my blog: amurmann.com/posts/good-d...
This sci-fi video from 5 years ago about drone warfare was so prescient: youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
The footage of the Ukrainian drones coming outit of the truck are so very close to what this sci-fi video showed us.
The footage of the Ukrainian drones coming outit of the truck are so very close to what this sci-fi video showed us.
Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST
YouTube video by DUST
youtu.be
June 2, 2025 at 11:40 PM
This sci-fi video from 5 years ago about drone warfare was so prescient: youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
The footage of the Ukrainian drones coming outit of the truck are so very close to what this sci-fi video showed us.
The footage of the Ukrainian drones coming outit of the truck are so very close to what this sci-fi video showed us.
I've been really impressed by how good LLMs are now at coding and how handy they are doing k8s stuff. That said, it almost always wants to hardcode passwords and I need to remind it that we should create secrets instead. Works but insecure is a very bad way to fail.
April 29, 2025 at 5:32 PM
I've been really impressed by how good LLMs are now at coding and how handy they are doing k8s stuff. That said, it almost always wants to hardcode passwords and I need to remind it that we should create secrets instead. Works but insecure is a very bad way to fail.
Tiny junco fledgling on our patio couldn't be cuter.
April 26, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Tiny junco fledgling on our patio couldn't be cuter.
macOS has had multiple desktops for years now. Yet the main reason to avoid restarts remains that what window is on what desktop doesn't get preserved. Very frustrating that after so many years there is still no built-in solution for this.
April 17, 2025 at 4:12 PM
macOS has had multiple desktops for years now. Yet the main reason to avoid restarts remains that what window is on what desktop doesn't get preserved. Very frustrating that after so many years there is still no built-in solution for this.
Difficult Conversations by Stone, Heen and Patton is such a valuable book. Maybe the best book to reread every few years. It's such a crucial topic to think about with big impact on pretty much all areas of life.
April 11, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Difficult Conversations by Stone, Heen and Patton is such a valuable book. Maybe the best book to reread every few years. It's such a crucial topic to think about with big impact on pretty much all areas of life.
Few things could improve all our lives more than everyone reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. If you have Spotify you can just listen to the audio book while doing household chores. It's easy to consume, highly entertaining and invaluable: open.spotify.com/show/004wpJH...
Basic Economics, Fifth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
Thomas Sowell · Audiobook
open.spotify.com
April 3, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Few things could improve all our lives more than everyone reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. If you have Spotify you can just listen to the audio book while doing household chores. It's easy to consume, highly entertaining and invaluable: open.spotify.com/show/004wpJH...
Portland Japanese garden especially delightful today
March 26, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Portland Japanese garden especially delightful today
Hazel points out a lot of important things here! I want to add a pattern I've seen pop up occasionally where developers see Linux or talks like "How GitHub uses GitHub to build GitHub" and think engineers should just replace product managers. This doesn't work when your customers aren't developers.
This is a harmful phrasing and it’s disappointing to see it used.
Pretending that no management is happening and, worse, offering the implication that less management is “good” is a viewpoint that I wish we could evolve beyond as an industry, already.
Especially leaders: do better, and be better.
Pretending that no management is happening and, worse, offering the implication that less management is “good” is a viewpoint that I wish we could evolve beyond as an industry, already.
Especially leaders: do better, and be better.
March 12, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Hazel points out a lot of important things here! I want to add a pattern I've seen pop up occasionally where developers see Linux or talks like "How GitHub uses GitHub to build GitHub" and think engineers should just replace product managers. This doesn't work when your customers aren't developers.
Reposted by Alexander The >
Katie Leonard (one of our eng managers) recently wrote a 🔥killer🔥 piece on the current obsession with cutting middle management in the name of "efficiency".
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. An org running at 100% capacity is brittle, not agile."
www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuttin...
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. An org running at 100% capacity is brittle, not agile."
www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuttin...
Cutting Middle Management Is Costing Your Capacity for Change
Over the last year, the tech industry has seen a wave of layoffs targeting middle management. Executives at companies like Meta, Shopify, and Amazon have framed this as a push toward efficiency.
www.linkedin.com
March 6, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Katie Leonard (one of our eng managers) recently wrote a 🔥killer🔥 piece on the current obsession with cutting middle management in the name of "efficiency".
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. An org running at 100% capacity is brittle, not agile."
www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuttin...
"Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. An org running at 100% capacity is brittle, not agile."
www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuttin...
As the second part in my series of software development trade-offs, I wrote about internal documentation: amurmann.com/posts/how-mu...
Please share your thoughts or request future topics by responding here.
Please share your thoughts or request future topics by responding here.
Trade-Offs: How Much Internal Documentation?
As part of my series on trade-offs in software development, I want to discuss what might impact how much and what internal documentation a team should write.
amurmann.com
February 18, 2025 at 1:00 AM
As the second part in my series of software development trade-offs, I wrote about internal documentation: amurmann.com/posts/how-mu...
Please share your thoughts or request future topics by responding here.
Please share your thoughts or request future topics by responding here.
I've long wished for more nuance in how we talk about choices we make in our software development process and to a lesser extent technology choices. So I finally started writing about trade-offs in software development: amurmann.com/posts/trade-...
Your comments below will show up on the article.
Your comments below will show up on the article.
Trade-offs In Software Development - Or The Necessity to Embrace Imperfection
There is so much good writing about best practices in software development. There are articles telling you about the virtues of test-driven development, refactoring, different types of documentation, ...
amurmann.com
February 10, 2025 at 7:34 PM
I've long wished for more nuance in how we talk about choices we make in our software development process and to a lesser extent technology choices. So I finally started writing about trade-offs in software development: amurmann.com/posts/trade-...
Your comments below will show up on the article.
Your comments below will show up on the article.
One of my main issue working with Cursor is that I've yet to get it to stop implementing functionality that goes beyond what's tested. No matter how clear I try to make that we are doing TDD and that it should only make the test pass, it does more
February 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM
One of my main issue working with Cursor is that I've yet to get it to stop implementing functionality that goes beyond what's tested. No matter how clear I try to make that we are doing TDD and that it should only make the test pass, it does more
I've been programming with Cursor the last few days. I found that the most productive pattern that won't have you fall into any quicksand is in essence good, old ping-pong pair programming. I write a test; Cursor makes it pass; I tell Cursor what test to write next and then I make it pass and so on
February 2, 2025 at 8:12 PM
I've been programming with Cursor the last few days. I found that the most productive pattern that won't have you fall into any quicksand is in essence good, old ping-pong pair programming. I write a test; Cursor makes it pass; I tell Cursor what test to write next and then I make it pass and so on
One important skills when programming with the help of AI is being able to tell when it's getting you into quicksand. I find this frequently happens when it's using an API that doesn't exist. I don't think I've seen it happen once where I pointed this out and it then found a working solution.
January 29, 2025 at 4:44 AM
One important skills when programming with the help of AI is being able to tell when it's getting you into quicksand. I find this frequently happens when it's using an API that doesn't exist. I don't think I've seen it happen once where I pointed this out and it then found a working solution.
Yuval Noah Harari makes some great points in Nexus about the potential future impact on politics from the possible turmoil in the job market due to AI even if unemployment remains low.
January 27, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Yuval Noah Harari makes some great points in Nexus about the potential future impact on politics from the possible turmoil in the job market due to AI even if unemployment remains low.
Reminder that documentation matters even more on projects you touch rarely. I spent way too much time figuring out how I had built and deployed a small app I built earlier this year
January 22, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reminder that documentation matters even more on projects you touch rarely. I spent way too much time figuring out how I had built and deployed a small app I built earlier this year
Watching season 2 of Silo and then S2E1 of Severance is so enlightening. I always thought I disliked mystery box shows. They frequently don't pay off and then fell like I wasted so much time. The contrast between these two shows makes clear though that the issue is different.
January 18, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Watching season 2 of Silo and then S2E1 of Severance is so enlightening. I always thought I disliked mystery box shows. They frequently don't pay off and then fell like I wasted so much time. The contrast between these two shows makes clear though that the issue is different.
95%+ of complaints about "capitalism" come down to complaints that we still don't live in a post-scarcity society.
January 18, 2025 at 12:54 AM
95%+ of complaints about "capitalism" come down to complaints that we still don't live in a post-scarcity society.
A world where this is taken for granted 🤩
December 15, 2024 at 5:25 PM
A world where this is taken for granted 🤩
I've been having nightmares from this scifi short ever since it first came out. Back then it felt 10+ years away. Now it feels like it could happen any moment. The worst is that there seems to be no obvious defense to this, no matter what we do as a society
youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST
YouTube video by DUST
youtu.be
December 14, 2024 at 10:00 PM
I've been having nightmares from this scifi short ever since it first came out. Back then it felt 10+ years away. Now it feels like it could happen any moment. The worst is that there seems to be no obvious defense to this, no matter what we do as a society
youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?...
Insane! Iran using an automated system to detect and threaten hundreds of thousands women who are driving their car without a headscarf.
December 14, 2024 at 8:15 PM
Insane! Iran using an automated system to detect and threaten hundreds of thousands women who are driving their car without a headscarf.
Mephisto (www.imdb.com/title/tt0082...) is a truly remarkable movie.It portrays the struggle and compromises involved in deciding to stay or leave from a beloved place and culture as a totalitarian system slowly closes its grip. A underrated and highly important movie. Watch it! Now more than ever.
Mephisto (1981) ⭐ 7.7 | Drama
2h 26m | Unrated
www.imdb.com
December 14, 2024 at 4:41 AM
Mephisto (www.imdb.com/title/tt0082...) is a truly remarkable movie.It portrays the struggle and compromises involved in deciding to stay or leave from a beloved place and culture as a totalitarian system slowly closes its grip. A underrated and highly important movie. Watch it! Now more than ever.
I have to admit that I'm quite surprised how bad the air quality is in Nepal & Bhutan, as well as DRC and the Arabian peninsula. I expected western Europe to be worse than it is. aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/the-index/
The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI)
Produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), The Air Quality Life Index, converts air pollution concentrations into their impact on life expectancy.
aqli.epic.uchicago.edu
December 14, 2024 at 2:24 AM
I have to admit that I'm quite surprised how bad the air quality is in Nepal & Bhutan, as well as DRC and the Arabian peninsula. I expected western Europe to be worse than it is. aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/the-index/