Methodical Margin

About

Posted 11 days ago · 36,475 reads

Terminal emulators are primitive tools compared to modern IDEs, but they force a certain discipline. You can't rely on auto-completion and syntax highlighting to write code for you; you have to understand what you're writing.

Terminal emulators are primitive tools compared to modern IDEs, but they force a certain discipline. You can't rely on auto-completion and syntax highlighting to write code for you; you have to understand what you're writing.

Systems thinking matters.

Type systems don't prevent bugs—they just catch certain categories of bugs earlier. The real benefit is the documentation they provide about what a function is supposed to do.

Type systems don't prevent bugs—they just catch certain categories of bugs earlier. The real benefit is the documentation they provide about what a function is supposed to do.

Legacy code is called legacy for a reason. It works. It's been tested in production. It's often the most reliable code in your system, even if it doesn't follow modern conventions.

The most important insight I've had in the last few years is that constraints are a feature, not a bug. When you have unlimited resources, you can solve any problem in a hundred different ways. When you have constraints—limited memory, limited time, limited developers—you're forced to think more clearly.

See also

More on this topic

Code reviews are less about finding bugs and more about ensuring that the team understands why a decision was made. The review is a conversation, not a gate.

Systems thinking matters.

Most of the code we write is not rocket science. It's ordinary business logic, wrapped in layers of frameworks and abstractions. Sometimes the simplest implementation is the best.