When solving a problem in a codebase, you’re not done when the symptoms stop. You’re done when the problem has disappeared and will never come back. It’s very easy to stop solving a problem when it no longer has any visible symptoms. You’ve fixed the bug, nobody is complaining, and there seem to be other pressing issues. So why continue…

Much like we gain knowledge about the behavior of the physical universe via the scientific method, we gain knowledge about the behavior of our software via a system of assertion, observation, and experimentation called “testing.” There are many things one could desire to know about a software system. It seems that most often we want to know if it actually…

I don’t often dive deep into the philosophical underpinnings of Code Simplicity, but I’ve been realizing more and more that there are a few philosophical principles behind the writings that would be valuable to share. Also, some of these philosophies haven’t been fully formed until I sat with the work for a long time, applied it in a lot of…

Your program is not important to me. I don’t care about its user interface. I don’t care what its name is. I don’t care that you made it, or what version it is. The only thing I care about is that your program helps me accomplish my purpose. That’s a truly remarkable feat, and if your program does it, you…

Growing and maintaining an open-source community depends essentially on three things: Getting people interested in contributing Removing the barriers to entering the project and contributing Retaining contributors so that they keep contributing If you can get people interested, then have them actually contribute, and then have them stick around, you have a community. Otherwise, you don’t. If you are just…