We recently sped up our integration tests by a factor of ten by running many of them in parallel. There were several flaky tests in the new test suite. Claude was really useful in getting rid of almost all flakyness, … Continue reading →

Having used Claude Code for a few months now, I have noticed how software development has changed for me. I write a lot less code, but I spend more time understanding and testing the code Claude has written. The proportions … Continue reading →

For the last few months, I have been developing a new reporting application. Early on, I decided to add a –dry-run option to the run command. This turned out to be quite useful – I have used it many times … Continue reading →

Since 2002, I have been keeping track of all the tricky bugs I have come across. Nine years ago, I wrote a blog post with the lessons learned from the bugs up till then. Now I have reviewed all the … Continue reading →

Here are more good programming quotes I have found since my last post. Programming “Configuration is coding in a poorly designed programming language without tests, version control, or documentation.”Gregor Hohpe “It’s the developers misunderstanding, not the expert knowledge, that gets … Continue r...

This week I attended the Jfokus software development conference in Stockholm, Sweden. I first went in 2011, and I have been back many times through the years. The conference has a Java focus (duh!), but many talks cover general topics … Continue reading →

I am using a very simple system for remembering commands and procedures, and for tracking what I work on. I have two plain text files called notes.txt and worktime.txt. In the notes file, I write down things that are important … Continue reading →

Using ChatGPT when I code has been a real productivity boost for me. Instead of reading an example on Stack Overflow and figuring out how to adapt it to my particular case, I immediately get code tailored to my specific … Continue reading →

Before I read The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya, I only knew about John von Neumann in two contexts: that computers use the von Neumann architecture, and that he appeared in a story about a mathematical problem I … Continue reading →

For the first time ever, I was laid off, and had to find a new software developer job. I managed to find a new one, but it took longer than I thought, and it was a lot of work. I … Continue reading →

“Software design is preparation for change; change of behavior” Tidy First? is a new book by Kent Beck. It is a short little book, only about 100 pages (and lots of white space on them), but it contains some deep … Continue reading →

I really like this quote from Jeff Bezos: “Anybody who doesn’t change their mind a lot is dramatically underestimating the complexity of the world we live in.” Lately I have been thinking about what I have changed my mind about … Continue reading →