Julian Friedman’s blog

I’ve decided to mess with the site, in an effort to start writing again, before the AI takes over etc etc. I’ve migrated a couple posts. The rest will follow on not, soon or not. Hello.

Some really great things happened in 2022 - I started a new job, learned a lot, and had a really off the charts wonderful baby - but on balance it sort of sucked. The year started weirdly. After the best part of 17 years at IBM, and in the midst of really loving my job there working on open-sourcey things, I decided I needed a change. There were a bunch of factors....

It’s not how I’d write software. Hundreds of developers on one code base. Lots of proposal writing and design work before embarking on code. PR-based code review meaning it can take days - or longer - for a change to hit the main branch. Minimal pairing, no stand-ups. Long release cycles meaning the first real customer feedback on a change might be months after it (finally) lands in main. It’s not how I’d write software....