One Roundtrip Per Navigation(opens in new tab)
What do HTML, GraphQL, and RSC have in common?
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Latest posts from blogs I follow
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The promise that wasn’t kept(opens in new tab)
This isn't progress.
kdash(opens in new tab)
A simple and fast dashboard for Kubernetes.
Speaking & Consulting(opens in new tab)
Want a dose of dry wit and hard-earned lessons at your event or in your codebase? I speak and consult on legacy systems, privacy, burnout, and fixing things that actually matter.
Let's end kidney deaths: buy one of my kidneys(opens in new tab)
🤖 When AI Agents Start Panicking: Wild Emails from a Failing Vending Business(opens in new tab)
🤔 I struggle with most research papers, but the Vending-Bench: A Benchmark for Long-Term Coherence of Autonomous Agents was an easy read. The paper follows a fascinating study where researchers simulate various LLM models running a vending machine business over ...
#433: Dev in the Arena(opens in new tab)
Topics covered in this episode: git-flight-rules Uravelling t-strings neohtop Introducing Pyrefly: A new type checker and IDE experience for Python Extras Joke See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/433
Coding With My Eyes Wide Shut(opens in new tab)
At WorkOS's AI onsite and MCP Night, I experimented with vibe coding. What started as a two-hour experiment with 5,000 lines of unseen TypeScript became a glimpse into programming's future.
Vibe coding for teams, thoughts to date(opens in new tab)
(note: this is still a topic I’m interested in and thinking about a lot, but this blog post from 8 months ago is so out of date as to be useless - 2026/02/07)
May 2025(opens in new tab)
How to collect Webmentions for your site(opens in new tab)
Quick disclaimer before we start. This is well-trod ground. Nothing here is new or revolutionary, nothing about this implementation hasn’t already been done by smarter folks than I :) This is just my blog post about it. We’ll use webmention.io ...
Writing bugs with K.S. Bhaskar(opens in new tab)
It's easy to talk about everything when you've been writing software for half a century. Bhaskar has some amazing insights from his impressive career building software using everything from punch cards to AI. If you like learning about the past ...
Elixir/Phoenix Liveview was a mistake(opens in new tab)
I made an expensive technical decision on Phoenix Liveview for the Smol Talk webapp about a year ago that I now regret, and am jotting down some notes to self for why.
Make a cutting room floor(opens in new tab)
OKRs: Objectives, Key Results, and Corporate Cosplay(opens in new tab)
A cynical developer's guide to why OKRs often fail, how they sometimes help, and what to do when you're assigned 15 of them.
Scrum Helped. Then It Got in the Way.(opens in new tab)
Scrum helped us escape the waterfall. But it’s become more ceremony than substance—and the real work is happening in the cracks between stand-ups.
TIL Poppler's pdftoppm to convert PDF pages into PNG files(opens in new tab)
Today I learned about pdftoppm, a simple CLI tool that can convert each page of a PDF into separate image files. My use case was to chop up a few big PDF reports to make OCR and data analysis easier, ...
basalt(opens in new tab)
A TUI for managing Obsidian vaults and notes.
About(opens in new tab)
The Cynical Developer is a blog for tired engineers, reflective skeptics, and anyone who’s seen too many “Next Big Things” end up as tomorrow’s tech debt. This site is maintained by a seasoned developer with a mild aversion to buzzwords ...
Contact(opens in new tab)
Want to reach out? I’m happy to hear from fellow devs, writers, or the hopelessly over-engineered. Email: [email protected] Please don’t send cold sales pitches. I’m not that kind of cynical. Got something to say? Use the form below. Please, no ...
From JNDI Hell to CDI Heaven: A Developer’s Path to Sanity(opens in new tab)
Because @Stateless shouldn’t require 3 XML files and a blood sacrifice.
Well, what if I'm wrong?(opens in new tab)
Anyone online has seen over the past years how the frequency of Palestinian accounts on Bluesky and other platforms has increased, two- and four-fold, folks asking for help and linking to GoFundMes. They share their stories and plea for help, ...
#432: How To Fix Your Computer(opens in new tab)
Topics covered in this episode: pre-commit: install with uv PEP 773: A Python Installation Manager for Windows (Accepted) Changes for Textual The Best Programmers I Know Extras Joke See the full show notes for this episode on the website at ...
ty: Astral's New Type Checker (Formerly Red-Knot)(opens in new tab)
See the full show notes for this episode on the website at talkpython.fm/506
Have We Lost Our Way?(opens in new tab)
Agile was never supposed to be a checklist. Somewhere between the ceremonies and the certifications, we forgot what it was for.
Unravelling t-strings(opens in new tab)
PEP 750 introduced t-strings for Python 3.14. In fact, they are so new that as of Python 3.14.0b1 there still isn't any documentation yet for t-strings. 😅 As such, this blog post will hopefully help explain what exactly t-strings are ...
Design Pressure(opens in new tab)
Ever had this weird gut feeling that something is off in your code, but couldn’t put the finger on why? Are you starting your projects with the best intentions, following all best practices, and still feel like your architecture turns ...
As the pendulum swings(opens in new tab)
Getting from command-and-control to trust and autonomy—and why most teams never quite make it.
Laser-Cut Pottery Throwing Gauge(opens in new tab)
I designed a pottery throwing gauge that I could laser cut with scrap material, and assemble using only friction and bat pins.
Salter’s Screwdriver Theory of Latency(opens in new tab)
We’ve all noticed that software never seems to get any faster no matter how much faster the hardware gets. This easily-observable fact is usually explained in one of two ways: Software devs are lazy, and refuse to optimize more than ...
2025 Advice to my old selves(opens in new tab)
I turned a birthday recently and it was so busy (DataCouncil + sg flight) that i never really got the chance to sit and reflect. a lot of things are going well, lots more could be better. I'm the only ...
Organizing a design system via folksonomy(opens in new tab)
An Evolution of a Software Company(opens in new tab)
The startup origin story you've lived through at least once—and what usually comes next.
Distributing command line tools for macOS(opens in new tab)
In this post I’ll show how to properly distribute a command line tool for macOS.
Knowledge creates technical debt(opens in new tab)
Some history on term “technical debt” and on better language to use when communicating about it.
t-strings in Python (PEP 750)(opens in new tab)
See the full show notes for this episode on the website at talkpython.fm/505
The experience is enough(opens in new tab)
I found my tribe at a conference.
🤷♂️ I miss Visual Basic(opens in new tab)
I miss Visual Basic. I could build something meaningful with it in 15 to 30 minutes in a way that I have never seen anything since then, even come close to. “For example, I personally believe that Visual Basic did ...
HTML is better than React!?(opens in new tab)
“[...] baseline HTML that gets progressively enhanced into something better when JS is available… 1. Gives people a more usable experience earlier in the process. 2. Ensures that on slow connections your site doesn’t seem like trash. 3. Means that ...
It wasn’t the idea that failed: it was the execution(opens in new tab)
And we still can't get it right in 2025.
🗓️ Office Hours for May 2025(opens in new tab)
This Friday, I’m hosting a morning edition of my office hours, and here is my schedule for the rest of May: Friday, May 9th, 2025, 8am to 10:30am - 🌄 Early edition (Time.is link for CT) Friday, May 16th, 2025: ...
234: pytest-metadata - provides access to test session metadata(opens in new tab)
pytest-metadata is described as a plugin for pytest that provides access to test session metadata. That is such a humble description for such a massively useful plugin. If you're already using pytest-html, you have pytest-metadata already installed, as pytest-metadata is ...
Static as a Server(opens in new tab)
You wouldn't download a site.
RSC for Astro Developers(opens in new tab)
Islands, but make it fractal.
#431: Nerd Gas(opens in new tab)
Topics covered in this episode: pirel: Python release cycle in your terminal FastAPI Cloud Python's new t-strings Extras Joke See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/431
Developer Trends in 2025(opens in new tab)
See the full show notes for this episode on the website at talkpython.fm/504
233: pytest-check - allow multiple failures per test(opens in new tab)
pytest-check is a pytest plugin that allows multiple failures per test.Normally, a test function will fail and stop running with the first failed assert. That's totally fine for tons of kinds of software tests. However, there are times where you'd ...
Functional HTML(opens in new tab)
Tags on both sides.
Welcome to The Cynical Developer(opens in new tab)
I’ve been a commercial software developer since 2005. I’ve earned a BSc in Computer Science (mostly for the debt), and spent the last two decades writing code at big corporations, scrappy startups, and everything in between. WYSIWYG This blog exists ...
