Galo Navarro
@varoa.net
Builds infrastructure and automation for AI workloads, Principal Eng @Midokura.
Long form at http://varoa.net
Long form at http://varoa.net
“[…] writing, which is the technology of the rational mind”
July 26, 2025 at 2:26 PM
“[…] writing, which is the technology of the rational mind”
Reposted by Galo Navarro
What Doesn’t Change
What Doesn’t Change
Why the faster tech evolves and AI advances, the more valuable computer science fundamentals become. Understanding principles beats chasing trends.
terriblesoftware.org
July 17, 2025 at 9:08 AM
What Doesn’t Change
One of the interesting parts about software engineering is that each domain you work in requires re-asessing every pattern and best practise that seemed set in stone in other domains.
July 16, 2025 at 2:21 PM
One of the interesting parts about software engineering is that each domain you work in requires re-asessing every pattern and best practise that seemed set in stone in other domains.
I have Copilot (+ Claude) stuck in an infinite loop of refactors with small "improvements" to its own implementation of a relatively simple prompt.
Feature parity with human devs is one step closer.
Feature parity with human devs is one step closer.
July 12, 2025 at 4:20 PM
I have Copilot (+ Claude) stuck in an infinite loop of refactors with small "improvements" to its own implementation of a relatively simple prompt.
Feature parity with human devs is one step closer.
Feature parity with human devs is one step closer.
Listening to The Sonics' Hitch Hike, noticed that The Velvet Underground reused the riff in There She Goes, the Sonics were covering Marvin Gaye.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-US...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyL...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbW3...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-US...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyL...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbW3...
Marvin Gaye Hitchhike
YouTube video by ron torres
www.youtube.com
July 3, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Listening to The Sonics' Hitch Hike, noticed that The Velvet Underground reused the riff in There She Goes, the Sonics were covering Marvin Gaye.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-US...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyL...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbW3...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-US...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyL...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbW3...
Warming up to this reading list enforced backupcy thing, thanks Pocket
May 28, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Warming up to this reading list enforced backupcy thing, thanks Pocket
Reposted by Galo Navarro
It takes you about the same amount of time to read this post as the amount of downtime you’d be allowed per week with 99.999% availability
May 18, 2025 at 4:50 PM
It takes you about the same amount of time to read this post as the amount of downtime you’d be allowed per week with 99.999% availability
“One does not replace a blown fuse until one knows just why it has blown.”
May 17, 2025 at 8:13 AM
“One does not replace a blown fuse until one knows just why it has blown.”
There are still 1980’s style sysadmin orgs that have survived by hiding behind the fancy labels of DevOps / SRE / Platform engineering
Platform engineering is about giving internal engineering teams the tools they need to provision, manage, understand, and operate the software they own.
If you're running it for them, you're an ops team.
If you're building tools, sans PM/designers, you're an infra team.
If you're running it for them, you're an ops team.
If you're building tools, sans PM/designers, you're an infra team.
May 1, 2025 at 7:43 AM
There are still 1980’s style sysadmin orgs that have survived by hiding behind the fancy labels of DevOps / SRE / Platform engineering
Been inspecting some pmap outputs these days, and could not find any decent visualization tools. Here is a quick one (nods to @simonwillison.net toolbox).
varoa.net/tools/pmap-v...
varoa.net/tools/pmap-v...
April 28, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Been inspecting some pmap outputs these days, and could not find any decent visualization tools. Here is a quick one (nods to @simonwillison.net toolbox).
varoa.net/tools/pmap-v...
varoa.net/tools/pmap-v...
New small tool coding workflow: open vscode, agent mode, ask for tool, go do $chore
April 27, 2025 at 4:09 PM
New small tool coding workflow: open vscode, agent mode, ask for tool, go do $chore
So em dash is the new delve?
April 23, 2025 at 5:38 PM
So em dash is the new delve?
Reposted by Galo Navarro
The more we lean into vibe-based coding, the clearer it becomes that we’ll still need good operators to keep everything sane and under control
April 20, 2025 at 5:11 AM
The more we lean into vibe-based coding, the clearer it becomes that we’ll still need good operators to keep everything sane and under control
Surfacing this from a thread.
I don't get the point with seeking a capitalized Design Pattern as a silver bullet.
It's not the pattern you chose on day 1. Nobody can anticipate how a complex system will evolve over time.
It's about consistently taking design decisions that optimize for ease of change, and adapt to new info
It's not the pattern you chose on day 1. Nobody can anticipate how a complex system will evolve over time.
It's about consistently taking design decisions that optimize for ease of change, and adapt to new info
April 14, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Surfacing this from a thread.
April 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Everything associated to the “software craftsmanship” mystique is up for surprises
April 12, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Everything associated to the “software craftsmanship” mystique is up for surprises
When I wrote about "AI will choke delivery pipelines", no-Fri-deploys was one of the practises I mentally labelled as AI-unfriendly. Interrupting the flow of code on Fri creates a glut for Mon. And bundling changes tangles latent defects, making troubleshooting harder.
varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...
varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...
April 12, 2025 at 6:30 AM
When I wrote about "AI will choke delivery pipelines", no-Fri-deploys was one of the practises I mentally labelled as AI-unfriendly. Interrupting the flow of code on Fri creates a glut for Mon. And bundling changes tangles latent defects, making troubleshooting harder.
varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...
varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...
When bundling $thing2 into $thing1 looks like a good opportunity, that's the signal for NOT doing it.
If they looked like bad opportunities overengineering & overscoping would never happen.
If they looked like bad opportunities overengineering & overscoping would never happen.
April 9, 2025 at 12:04 PM
When bundling $thing2 into $thing1 looks like a good opportunity, that's the signal for NOT doing it.
If they looked like bad opportunities overengineering & overscoping would never happen.
If they looked like bad opportunities overengineering & overscoping would never happen.
Reposted by Galo Navarro
Anybody want to come work on Tailscale's internal dev tooling/productivity, CI, bots, dashboards, etc?
Pretty please? 😅
Pretty please? 😅
April 8, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Anybody want to come work on Tailscale's internal dev tooling/productivity, CI, bots, dashboards, etc?
Pretty please? 😅
Pretty please? 😅
I mention the DORA report in the piece I published today. The report has a page about AI impacting sw delivery negatively. The recommendations (screenshot) about smaller changelists and robust testing make sense, but I'm somewhat skeptical that they are viable ->
April 8, 2025 at 5:27 PM
I mention the DORA report in the piece I published today. The report has a page about AI impacting sw delivery negatively. The recommendations (screenshot) about smaller changelists and robust testing make sense, but I'm somewhat skeptical that they are viable ->
If you want a TL;DR of the post it’s probably this one!
This line is pure gold:
When AI agents are able to deliver tasks based on a prompt, there won’t be enough copies of the Mythical Man Month to dissuade business folks from trying to accelerate road maps and product strategies by provisioning fleets of AI coding agents.
When AI agents are able to deliver tasks based on a prompt, there won’t be enough copies of the Mythical Man Month to dissuade business folks from trying to accelerate road maps and product strategies by provisioning fleets of AI coding agents.
April 8, 2025 at 2:52 PM
If you want a TL;DR of the post it’s probably this one!
April 8, 2025 at 12:58 PM
The type of content I expect from my timeline on a fine Monday like this
It's widely known that sharing a queue across multiple servers, rather than queue-per-server, often helps reduce latency and improve utilization. But when is one queue better? In my new blog post, I look at one case: different classes of work. Read it here: brooker.co.za/blog/2025/03...
March 31, 2025 at 5:30 AM
The type of content I expect from my timeline on a fine Monday like this