Notes

Thoughts & Observations

Open Archive

Half-formed ideas, lessons from the trenches, and the occasional rant. Writing to think, not to publish.

The Rise of the AI Orchestrator: Why the Generalist is King

In the current technological landscape, the "specialist" trap is becoming a liability. As AI continues to commoditize syntax and boilerplate code, the true value of an engineer has shifted from how to write a function to what systems should be built and how they connect.

JAMstack for Mobile Apps: Why Serve JSON Instead of Building APIs

I built festival apps serving thousands of concurrent users. No backend APIs. No servers melting down. Just pre-generated JSON files and 'islands' of dynamic content. Here's how JAMstack thinking changed mobile development for us.

What Rock Climbing Taught Me About Software Architecture

Hanging 20 meters up a rock face, scared, unsure if the next move will hold, this is where I learned the most important lessons about building software systems. Here's what the vertical world taught me about engineering.

I Built a Virtual DOM Before React Existed (And Nobody Cared)

In 2012, I created a JSON-based virtual DOM system. A year later, React launched with the exact same concept. Here's why being first doesn't matter.

What a Decade of Product Engineering Taught Me

In 2013, I co-founded Bondlayer, a visual platform for building websites and mobile apps without code. Here's what building a SaaS platform for a decade taught me about technology, business, and what really matters.

DRY in the Age of AI and Tailwind CSS: A Modern Guide

The DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle has been a cornerstone of software engineering for decades. However, the rise of Tailwind CSS - which encourages "utility-first" styles, and AI-powered coding assistants, which make copy-pasting code effortless, has sparked a debate: Is DRY dead, or has it just evolved?