So, I make a handful of small improvements to one of our systems and open a PR, and I’m trying to find a funny “many small fixes” image to go with it, and I run into this image:

there’s a thought that starts to come to mind when you’ve been cooking for a long time, which is “i could make that, cheaper, at home” , which is a rewarding thread to pull on, it turns out

pandemic forced me to learn to cook a bunch of stuff that I only ever ate at restaurants - butter chicken, pad thai, sushi, fried chicken, onion rings - and, like, it turns out, while I still eat out periodically, being excited about your own cooking is So Good

I’m not devoted enough to press my own california rolls, but just making a bowl of sushi rice and topping it with some shredded imitation crab, mayo, sesame seeds, cucumber and avocado is a delicious california donburi and so easy

this is a challenge.

you: reading this: what’s the take-out meal you love most in the world? What is the restaurant you wish you were at this very moment?

I swear to you, you CAN learn to make something at home that’s almost as good, you can eat it once a week for the rest of your life for a tiny fraction of the cost, why not do that?

I’m going to put a little star next to a few things like “puff pastry”, though, you should not make that at home

So, I had a neat idea of something I could do with a game I was working on: take the 2D plane the game was running on and stack it on a 3D plane, so that the game would visibly take place on a screen in a different, 3D world.

I whipped up a quick demo:

2025 Editor’s Note:

In retrospect, this neat idea was actually the worst kind of idea: a total project killer.

It sucked up a bunch of time and air, and obviously I lack the experience and chops to build a viable full 3D game: so chasing this idea would be impractical.

Something about the mere existence of this 2D/3D divide ended up drawing a lot of focus and thought, but it was so obviously impractical that the project couldn’t continue. Rather than rolling it back and continuing with an earlier build, I simply moved on to the next idea.

This was the last time I ever posted about this project.

A lot of my family work in supervisory roles, and when I talk to them about the difficulties of working with other people our problems are very different: they need to keep people motivated to work.

I rarely work with people who need to be motivated. Most of the people in my last few jobs have brought loads of their own motivation. If anything, they need to be calmed down and reminded to take their vacation days.

“Please do not build this from scratch: a solution already exists.”

Carl Sagan famously said

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”

— and I’ve met countless software developers (myself included) who would respond to that quote by rolling up their sleeves and going “welp.”

I use a term to justify building things that don’t need to be built: joy-driven development.

Sometimes, especially if you’re trying to manage your own flagging motivation, you can do things your own way because that makes it… more fun. It improves your sense of ownership over the product. It’s what differentiates craftsmanship from good engineering. Sure, the custom solution is not as flexible or well understood as the existing one, but…

A lot of becoming a senior developer is developing better instincts about where projects can and should fall on the DIY to NIH spectrum. I’m still way too gung-ho about building my own solutions for things.

My experience of being broadly creative but not overwhelmingly talented is one of tremendous, unending shame.

How dare I produce such shoddy trash? How dare I presume that any of my output is worth others’ time and attention?

I deserve my relative anonymity.

This is tempered by what I would describe as “grim defiance”. God damn you, I will reach deep down and I will produce more trash than you had ever thought possible, and I will press it right into your goddamned faces until you love me.