Author: dan

There’s a lot of excitement around AI writing code. And that excitement is justified. AI can produce code faster than any individual developer ever could. It can scaffold services, write tests, generate APIs, and even refactor existing systems. But the best way to understand AI isn’t as a replacement for engineers. It’s as something else…

I got a SMS message from a friend I loosely know. We’re FB friends and we’ve met IRL twice. They are also a *serious* player in the startup space — and I have a startup looking for financing. Here’s how the conversation went. This is where I think they are probing me to find out…

There’s a narrative forming in tech that AI is a young engineer’s tool. The assumption is that younger developers will adopt it faster, integrate it more naturally, and ultimately dominate in an AI-assisted development world. I’m not convinced. Older engineers may be uniquely equipped to use AI effectively. AI Makes the Same Mistakes as Junior…

There’s a belief in our industry that building software is incredibly hard. It isn’t. Writing code that works? That’s increasingly easy. Even “simple” AI systems can generate functional microservices with decent structure and solid test coverage. Given a clear task, modern AI can scaffold APIs, wire up a database, add authentication, and produce a respectable…

If you only open some developer tools occasionally, you’ve seen this: Open the tool → giant update → wait before you can work. This happens because Windows does not centrally update developer software. Many tools ship their own updaters, and they only run when you launch the application. Windows already has the solution: winget, the…

If you build on AWS long enough, you’ll eventually face the same question: Where should we store secrets and configuration? Keeping stuff in a local env file or applications.properties means either those files are going to get checked in, or even worse, casually shared between engineers. And what if your builds are made in a…

Executive Summary On-demand cloud workstations unlock powerful, cost-efficient computing for engineering teams. But as organizations scale beyond a handful of machines, a new challenge emerges: consistency. Manually configuring Windows systems through portals, scripts, and remote desktop sessions introduces drift, delays, and operational risk. This paper explores how Terraform and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) transform Azure-based…

Executive Summary Engineering teams increasingly need access to powerful computing resources, but not always on a continuous basis. Many modern workloads — from large builds and simulations to data processing and 3D rendering — are intense, short-lived, and highly variable. In these cases, traditional rack-mounted servers often lead to low utilization and high fixed costs.…

File extensions matter more than we like to admit. They’re not just a technical footnote — they’re a shared language. When you see .jpg, you expect an image. When you see .py, you expect Python. When you see .md, you expect Markdown. And that’s exactly the problem. Right now, the vogue in AI tooling is…

Over the last several days, we’ve been trying to solve what initially felt like a very reasonable problem: Can we use an AI assistant as a reliable, step-by-step installer assistant to a human for a moderately complex toolchain? On the surface, this seemed like a perfect use case for AI. The setup process is linear.…

Most people think “AI” means neural networks, training data, and a lot of math. Tic-Tac-Toe is a great counterexample. You can build a perfect Tic-Tac-Toe AI without learning, randomness, or guesswork—just logic, structure, and a clear way of evaluating outcomes. This post explains how an AI Tic-Tac-Toe engine works conceptually, without code, using plain language.…

If you’ve been following agentic AI systems like Codex-style coding agents, you’ve probably seen references to things like agents.md, skills.md, or “tool catalogs.” At first glance, these can look like extra ceremony — more files, more config, more abstraction. They’re not. They’re the reason agentic systems work at all. This post explains what agents and…

What Is n8n? If you haven’t heard of n8n yet, don’t worry — it’s nowhere near widespread adoption yet. But it’s coming fast. n8n is an open-source workflow automation platform that lets you connect APIs, services, scripts, and humans into long-running, stateful workflows. Think of it as a developer-friendly alternative to tools like Zapier, but…

If you spend any time doing remote development over SSH—especially with tools like VS Code Remote—eventually you hit the same annoyance: You know SSH keys are the right answer,you know passwordless login is possible,but the setup always feels more manual than it should. For years, I handled this by copying keys around by hand, editing…

Using AI to accelerate development is amazing—agents can write code, open pull requests, fix bugs, and keep your project humming. But giving your AI the same permissions you give trusted human maintainers is a silent disaster waiting to happen. Here’s the simple truth: your AI should always log into your repository with an account that…

Most software projects drift. Scope expands, priorities shift, and half the time you finish features you never meant to start. Over the last year, I’ve been experimenting with a workflow that keeps the project laser-focused: combine GitHub Speckit with an AI assistant from the very beginning — before a single line of code is written.…

Introduction Jsonmaker lets you create your own private, customizable bookmark library right inside your WordPress account. Each folder in your library can generate a live JSON feed, which can be synced directly into your Chrome bookmarks using the Subscribed Toolbar extension. This guide will show you how to: Register an account Log in and access…