The Daily Desk

Topics

Posted 46 minutes ago · 41,778 reads

APIs are contracts. Once you publish one, changing it becomes expensive for everyone who depends on it. The cost of breaking changes compounds over time, which is why the boring, conservative choice is usually the right one.

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.

Understanding the problem is half the solution.

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.

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.

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.

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.

See also

More on this topic

Readability is not about clever code or terse syntax. It's about making the intent of the code obvious to the next person who reads it—which might be you, six months later, having forgotten everything.

Your future self will thank you.

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.