A Developer's Blog
It's one of the paradoxes of blogging that most every blogger (including myself) is sharing what they know right now (let's quietly ignore those who blog purely for traffic and vanity).
Since everyone is learning (it's essentially a prerequisite for this business), this can result in misleading, obsolete or simply low-quality information being shared just as much as good information.
Keep this in mind as you read any blog - including this one. How experienced is the writer? How well do they really know what they're talking about? Do they blog about their mistakes as well as their successes?
You should consider yourself encouraged to check my ideas for yourself. Keep the date in mind as well - in our fast moving field, even good ideas can become obsolete.
Superpowers for your AI
29 Mar 2026
ai
If you want to take your use of AI for software development to the next level, you could do worse than superpowers, a set of interrelated AI skills that bring some process and rigor into play.
Autotitling Windows Terminal Tabs
17 Mar 2026
smart-code
I make use of Windows Terminal a lot. It’s great for having multiple different pieces of work open at the same time.
Don't assume shared understanding
25 Jan 2026
smart-code
Over a decade ago, a project manager and my work approached me with a proposal. You see, we had a minor quality problem, and he wanted us to do better.
Better Table Tests in Go
21 Oct 2025
go
Table-driven tests are a cornerstone of good unit testing in any language, Go included. They allow us to group related test cases, making it simple to cover numerous inputs, outputs, and edge cases in a concise and readable way. When you have functionality that needs to be exercised in a variety of ways, a table test is often the right tool for the job.
Error assertions
26 Apr 2025
testing
go
When writing a Go test, don’t just assert that an error occurred - assert that the error you have is the one you expect.
Series
| Code Gardening | 17 |
| Equality in .NET | 7 |
| Immutability Matters | 16 |
| Immutable Priority Queues | 15 |
| Psake | 17 |
| Technical Debt | 6 |
| Killing the Utility Class | 5 |
| Instance validation in C# | 12 |
| Redeveloping WordTutor | 42 |
Top Tags
| csharp | 115 |
| good-samaritan | 17 |
| powershell | 26 |
| professional | 88 |
| random | 37 |
| sharpen-the-saw | 51 |
| smart-code | 47 |
| testing | 25 |
| tips | 55 |
| ux | 33 |
| visual-studio | 19 |
Other Tags
Archive
| March 2026 | 2 |
| January 2026 | 1 |
| October 2025 | 1 |
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| September 2022 | 1 |
| July 2022 | 1 |
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| May 2022 | 2 |
| April 2022 | 1 |
| November 2021 | 1 |
| July 2021 | 4 |
| June 2021 | 3 |
| May 2021 | 3 |
| April 2021 | 2 |
| December 2020 | 1 |
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| 2019 | 52 |
| 2018 | 65 |
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| 2013 | 19 |
| 2012 | 25 |
| 2011 | 47 |
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| 2009 | 78 |
| 2008 | 89 |
| 2007 | 2 |
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| 2004 | 21 |
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| 1998 | 1 |
Recent posts
| Browsers and WSL | 31 Mar 2024 |
| Factory methods and functions | 05 Mar 2023 |
| Using Constructors | 27 Feb 2023 |
| An Inconvenient API | 18 Feb 2023 |
| Method Archetypes | 11 Sep 2022 |
| A bash puzzle, solved | 02 Jul 2022 |
| A bash puzzle | 25 Jun 2022 |
| Improve your troubleshooting by aggregating errors | 11 Jun 2022 |
| Improve your troubleshooting by wrapping errors | 28 May 2022 |
| Keep your promises | 14 May 2022 |
| When are you done? | 18 Apr 2022 |
| Fixing GitHub Authentication | 28 Nov 2021 |
| Sharpen The Saw - August 2021 | 31 Jul 2021 |
| Gesticulation Driven Development (GDD) | 24 Jul 2021 |
| Magpie Driven Development (MDD) | 10 Jul 2021 |
| Sharpen The Saw - July 2021 | 03 Jul 2021 |
| Rockstar Driven Development (RDD) | 26 Jun 2021 |
| Distraction Driven Development (DDD) | 12 Jun 2021 |
| Sharpen The Saw - June 2021 | 05 Jun 2021 |
| Promotion Driven Development (PDD) | 29 May 2021 |
| Complaint Driven Development (CDD) | 15 May 2021 |
| Profanity Driven Development (PDD) | 01 May 2021 |
| Hype Driven Development (HDD) | 17 Apr 2021 |
| The Other Development Methodologies | 03 Apr 2021 |
| Don't be that person | 05 Dec 2020 |
| Weapons of mass (privacy) destruction | 04 Jul 2020 |
| Caching without Race Conditions | 13 Jun 2020 |
| Sharpen The Saw - June 2020 | 06 Jun 2020 |
| Automated Inbox Cleanup with PowerShell | 30 May 2020 |
| Don't Gloss Over Complexity | 16 May 2020 |