Writing on software, systems, and hard-won lessons.
Writing on developer experience, systems thinking, and the mistakes behind both - covering AI workflows, continuous improvement, and the mental models that drive better decisions.
Writing on developer experience, systems thinking, and the mistakes behind both - covering AI workflows, continuous improvement, and the mental models that drive better decisions.
When I was a kid, adults kept telling me things were impossible. They were usually right, candy is not the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.
But some impossible mission claims were worth testing.
"It's impossible for someone to count to one million, that takes too long."
I remember trying to calculate how long it would take me to say each number out loud. Even at one number per second, it would be over 11 days of non-stop counting. Instead of trying that, I wondered if my Commodore 64 could do it for me instead.
10 counter = 1 20 PRINT counter 30 counter = counter + 1 40 GOTO 20
Looking at that goto line is a bit cringy now, but back then it was pure magic to see the screen fill up with numbers. After testing I could see it would take hours. So started the program in the morning, and after school I was happy to see it had just ticked past 1,000,000.
Around the same time, an Australian man named Les Stewart was also focused on the impossible mission. Instead of counting numbers or writing code, he decided to tippy type every number in words on a typewriter. He made it into the Guinness Book of Records after it took him 16 years, 7 months, seven typewriters, 1,000 ink ribbons, and 19,890 pages. I made it into the Family Book of High Fives.
"It's impossible to draw a straight line in the middle of a Commodore 64 screen."
One time my dad was telling me about how one of his work mates said a problem with C64 is there's no way to draw a straight line down the middle of the screen.
That seemed unlikely to me, so I decided to test it.
10 PRINT " |" 20 GOTO 10
Another GOTO for the win! Probably not exactly what the mysterious work mate had in mind, but looked like a perfectly centred vertical line on our family tv.
Crushing the computer at monopoly was one of my favourite pastimes. But waiting 5 minutes to load a game from a cassette tape was less fun. Out of curiosity, I once played the game tape as audio - it sounded like a fax machine arguing with a dial-up modem.
Instead of just staring at the loading screen, I developed a ritual where I would press play, then go make a cup of tea, and come back ready to play.
All these years later, I still make tea (or check Slack) when the CI runs.