Tool Complexity Might Have a Cure: Those Pesky People Who Say No

A while ago I got really triggered by by the following two tweets - one by Avdi and another by Pete This essay was on my mind - and lying dormant - for a couple of years, but I think it didnt lose its relevance.

An interesting twist in my recent usage of SQLite was the fact that I noticed my research scripts and the database intertwine more. SQLite is unique in that it really lives in-process, unlike standalone database servers. There is a feature to that which does not get used very frequently, but can be indispensable in some situations. By the way,...

In my work I tend to reach for SQLite more and more. The type of work I find it useful for most these days is quickly amalgamating, dissecting, collecting and analyzing large data sets. As I have outlined in my Euruko talk on scheduling, a key element of the project was writing a simulator. That simulator outputs metrics - lots and lots of...

Joke Accounts and the BOFH are Garbage by Aurynn Shaw struck a chord with me back in the day. After all, who wants to exclude people? Who wants to make them feel unwelcome? Having survived some amount of difficult working experiences I have changed my mind on this drastically. The joke accounts are a bitter necessity, and I’ll try to explain why.

Well-made software has a lifetime, and the lifetime is finite. However, sometimes software becomes neglected way before its lifetime comes to an end. Not obsoleted, not replaced - just.. neglected. Recently I have decided to resurrect one such piece of software. See, zip_tricks holds a special place in my heart. It was quite difficult to make,...