This is the second “launched” version of my blog. The first was years ago and the design was based on the design of thecribs.com because I have always been cool. That version died early and quietly but it wasn’t long before the limitation of me shouting at strangers in the train station grew weary and I needed to get back to it. When I decided to pull the trigger - I wanted to get going with a static page generated by one of the new kids on the block site generators (I never considered getting Mark Wahlberg to do it but that would have been cool).

(Is it time to learn gRPC?) I love REST, I think in REST. Truly. It’s been the reliable workhorse of web development for two decades. Simple URLs, JSON payloads you can read in Notepad, and an army of Stack Overflow answers at your fingertips. REST won the web and for good reason. But inside a modern data centre? It’s starting to feel like we’re turning up to a F1 race in a Volvo estate and no-one has ever got a winch driving a Volvo.

For years I’ve held up my hands like I’m describing the size of a fish I caught once (never been fishing but that is not your bee’s wax), showing the range of software quality. On one end: move fast and break things. On the other: quality is non-negotiable. Most of us have spent our careers swimming somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Deadlines loom, features need shipped, and we quietly nudge the principles aside in the name of speed (there is always a million dollar deal resting on that button being pink).

This blog was supposed to be a highbrow think piece about technology and how it is the most exciting it has been in ages. Using some of your apps has turned me into a rage-typing Karen. I have paid the money, maybe it’s my fault for expecting a premium experience but the constant upsell and thirst for a review is soul destroying. Consider this chump churned. The In-App Guilt Trip “Enjoying the app?

I am a full stack engineer I don’t care who hears that, I full stack and I proud. As half of you shrug with a “so what, everyone is full stack” and the other half scoff that I cannot be good at either if I claim to both. As you, dear reader know, I have been going through a bit a renaissance of code. While I tend to think in a whole system way and I, in the past, would build from the back-end forward.

After a few years of steering teams and scaling people, I’m finding my way back to writing code. I mean I never stopped but now computers can do it for me. Lets go! I’ve spent the last chapter of my career leading engineering teams – hiring, mentoring, planning, firefighting, celebrating. All the while I have been pretending to write code as a hobby. Recently I had cause to bust out a PoC on a Sunday afternoon, my first proper attempt to create software with AI assistance (do the kids call that vibe coding?