Technical opinions and commentaryhttps://jacob.blog/https://jacob.blog/links/you-need-ai-reduces-maintenance-costs/https://jacob.blog/links/you-need-ai-reduces-maintenance-costs/Link: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/blog/2026/you-need-ai-that-reduces-your-maintenance-costsTue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/last30days-skill/https://jacob.blog/links/last30days-skill/Link: https://github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skillSat, 09 May 2026 03:45:47 GMThttps://jacob.blog/gists/skill-research-topic/https://jacob.blog/gists/skill-research-topic/A skill for doing some light research on a broad topic.Wed, 06 May 2026 14:43:20 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/multica/https://jacob.blog/links/multica/Link: https://github.com/multica-ai/multicaTue, 05 May 2026 02:06:23 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/goose/https://jacob.blog/links/goose/Link: https://goose-docs.ai/Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/book-club/https://jacob.blog/notes/book-club/Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/everything-as-code-monorepo/https://jacob.blog/links/everything-as-code-monorepo/Link: https://www.kasava.dev/blog/everything-as-code-monorepoFri, 01 May 2026 21:28:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/gists/debounce-util/https://jacob.blog/gists/debounce-util/A simple debounce function with tests.Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/karpathy-llm-wiki/https://jacob.blog/links/karpathy-llm-wiki/Link: https://gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf555914893e9891c11519de94fThu, 09 Apr 2026 11:37:36 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/the-model-vs-the-harness/https://jacob.blog/notes/the-model-vs-the-harness/"What model does it use?" is the wrong question. Most of the differences you feel between AI tools come from the harness, not the model.Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/most-product-ideas-don-t-work/https://jacob.blog/notes/most-product-ideas-don-t-work/Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/cohesion-vs-coupling/https://jacob.blog/notes/cohesion-vs-coupling/Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/minions-one-shot-coding-agents/https://jacob.blog/links/minions-one-shot-coding-agents/Link: https://stripe.dev/blog/minions-stripes-one-shot-end-to-end-coding-agentsSat, 06 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/really-useful-git-commands/https://jacob.blog/notes/really-useful-git-commands/Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/one-way-doors-vs-two-way-doors/https://jacob.blog/notes/one-way-doors-vs-two-way-doors/Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/alternative-to-pms/https://jacob.blog/notes/alternative-to-pms/Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/product-management/https://jacob.blog/notes/product-management/Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/architecture-decision-records/https://jacob.blog/notes/architecture-decision-records/Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/learn-in-public/https://jacob.blog/notes/learn-in-public/Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/representative-problems/https://jacob.blog/notes/representative-problems/Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/type-i-and-type-ii-errors/https://jacob.blog/notes/type-i-and-type-ii-errors/Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/the-five-percent-rule/https://jacob.blog/notes/the-five-percent-rule/Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/right-size-models-for-the-work/https://jacob.blog/notes/right-size-models-for-the-work/Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/value-viability-usability-and-feasibility/https://jacob.blog/notes/value-viability-usability-and-feasibility/Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/slowification/https://jacob.blog/notes/slowification/Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/notes-on-creativity-inc/https://jacob.blog/notes/notes-on-creativity-inc/Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/strategists-audit-for-progress/https://jacob.blog/notes/strategists-audit-for-progress/Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/hypernormalization/https://jacob.blog/notes/hypernormalization/Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/what-makes-an-effective-product-team/https://jacob.blog/notes/what-makes-an-effective-product-team/Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/next-token-prediction-llms/https://jacob.blog/notes/next-token-prediction-llms/Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/giving-good-feedback/https://jacob.blog/notes/giving-good-feedback/Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/entertain-to-inform/https://jacob.blog/notes/entertain-to-inform/Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/running-effective-1-on-1s/https://jacob.blog/notes/running-effective-1-on-1s/Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/how-will-we-know/https://jacob.blog/notes/how-will-we-know/Effective engineering leadership optimizes for observable outcomesSun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/ball-of-yarn-analogy/https://jacob.blog/notes/ball-of-yarn-analogy/Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/effective-interfaces-decouple-clients-from-the-encapsulated-implementation/https://jacob.blog/notes/effective-interfaces-decouple-clients-from-the-encapsulated-implementation/Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/communication-is-the-job/https://jacob.blog/notes/communication-is-the-job/Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/gatekeeping/https://jacob.blog/notes/gatekeeping/Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/product-managers-are-not-project-managers/https://jacob.blog/notes/product-managers-are-not-project-managers/Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/create-psychological-safety/https://jacob.blog/notes/create-psychological-safety/Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/stable-dependencies-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/stable-dependencies-principle/Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/what-developers-miss-about-the-single-responsibility-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/what-developers-miss-about-the-single-responsibility-principle/The real meaning of the "S" in SOLID: a module should have one, and only one, reason to change.Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/how-to-estimate-work-like-a-senior-software-engineer/https://jacob.blog/notes/how-to-estimate-work-like-a-senior-software-engineer/A structured process for making software estimates that are more accurate than shots in the dark.Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/tech-debt/https://jacob.blog/notes/tech-debt/Defining and quantifying technical debt: what it is, where it comes from, and how to measure its impact on your team.Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/gists/jacob-blog-ui/https://jacob.blog/gists/jacob-blog-ui/Wed, 08 May 2024 15:47:08 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/wooldridge-what-is-an-agent/https://jacob.blog/links/wooldridge-what-is-an-agent/Link: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/michael.wooldridge/pubs/ker95/subsection3_1_1.htmlThu, 11 May 2023 20:25:57 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/yagni/https://jacob.blog/notes/yagni/Defer capabilities until need is proven; speculative code costs build time, calendar time, and carry weight in the codebase.Mon, 10 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/galls-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/galls-law/John Gall's rule of thumb for why v1 should stay small, end to end, and real before it tries to be clever.Sun, 11 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/hicks-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/hicks-law/Why choice reaction time scales with the log of alternatives, and what that buys you in menus, settings, and incident tooling.Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/conways-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/conways-law/System boundaries tend to follow communication boundaries. Plan for that or pay in glue code and meetings.Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/unix-philosophy/https://jacob.blog/notes/unix-philosophy/McIlroy's pipes-and-tools rules still explain good CLIs and composable services, even when the universal interface is JSON.Thu, 14 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/occams-razor/https://jacob.blog/notes/occams-razor/Why the familiar razor about unnecessary entities is sharper as a habit of work than as a slogan, across code, debugging, and ML.Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/amdahls-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/amdahls-law/Why parallel hardware stops helping once a fixed slice of work stays serial.Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/dunning-kruger-effect/https://jacob.blog/notes/dunning-kruger-effect/What Kruger and Dunning measured in their studies, why the pop account misleads teams, and how to run reviews and hiring without treating confidence as a personality probe.Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/hanlons-razor/https://jacob.blog/notes/hanlons-razor/Defaulting to non-malicious explanations in incidents, postmortems, and everyday teamwork.Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/parkinsons-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/parkinsons-law/Why slack in a deadline often turns into scope, polish, and meetings instead of safety margin.Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/cunninghams-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/cunninghams-law/Why wrong claims draw corrections faster than plain questions, and why the famous line is a shaky match for Ward Cunningham's own story.Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/kiss-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/kiss-principle/Why Keep It Simple is a habit for design and review, and how to tell simplicity apart from cleverness.Mon, 09 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/broken-windows-theory/https://jacob.blog/notes/broken-windows-theory/Visible neglect in a codebase invites more neglect; small repairs compound.Sat, 07 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/fitts-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/fitts-law/Why pointing time depends on distance and target size, and what that means for dense UIs, touch, and tools.Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/links/flowers/https://jacob.blog/links/flowers/Link: https://gigamonkeys.com/flowers/Mon, 14 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/law-of-leaky-abstractions/https://jacob.blog/notes/law-of-leaky-abstractions/Why every useful abstraction eventually forces you to learn what it hides, and what that means for frameworks and APIs.Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/moores-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/moores-law/Why the transistor cadence shaped software economics, and what changes when that cadence stretches.Sun, 16 May 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/the-ninety-nine-one-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/the-ninety-nine-one-principle/Heavy lurker and superuser skew is normal in participatory systems, which matters when you read feedback or run an internal forum.Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/cap-theorem/https://jacob.blog/notes/cap-theorem/Eric Brewer's CAP conjecture became a precise impossibility result for linearizable read-write services under arbitrary message loss.Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/pareto-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/pareto-principle/A small share of causes usually drives most of the effect; use the skew as a testable guess, not a debate club.Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/brooks-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/brooks-law/Fred Brooks on why staffing up a late project often pushes the finish line out, not in.Thu, 03 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/hofstadters-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/hofstadters-law/Why software work slips after you add slack, and how the joke about recursion maps onto real plans.Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/dunbars-number/https://jacob.blog/notes/dunbars-number/What Robin Dunbar's ~150 limit claims, and how it shows up in org design, on-call, and communication load.Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/the-ninety-ninety-rule/https://jacob.blog/notes/the-ninety-ninety-rule/Why the last slice of a build eats most of the calendar, and what to do about it.Fri, 18 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/murphys-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/murphys-law/Treat Murphy's law as risk hygiene, not fate. Defensive design, testing, and SRE habits turn the slogan into something you can ship.Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/clarkes-three-laws/https://jacob.blog/notes/clarkes-three-laws/When complex systems read as magic, people stop asking what has to stay true for them to work.Sun, 19 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/postels-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/postels-law/Why 'be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept' still shapes APIs and parsers, and where it breaks.Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/goodharts-law/https://jacob.blog/notes/goodharts-law/Why velocity, coverage targets, and badly written OKRs invite gaming once they become the scoreboard.Sun, 05 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://jacob.blog/notes/dry-principle/https://jacob.blog/notes/dry-principle/Hunt and Thomas on why duplicated knowledge is a maintenance tax, and when merging similar code makes change harder.Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT