Great essays
Programming
- Parse, don't validate (2017)
- Pipeline-oriented programming (2019)
- APIs as ladders (2022)
- Scaling Sidekiq at Gusto (2022)
- Heroku HTTP API Design (2015)
- How Complex Systems Fail (1998)
- Choose Boring Technology (2015)
- Do-Nothing Scripts (2019)
- Practical Railway-Oriented Programming in Ruby (2023)
- Cruddy by Design (2017)
- Hypermodern Python (2020)
- Pure UI (2015)
- Things You Should Never Do (2000)
- Load Balancing (2023)
- The Twelve-Factor Apps (2012)
- No Haunted Forests (2018)
- Is this true?
- Turbopuffer's architecture (2024)
- The Configuration Complexity Clock (2012)
- JSX Over The Wire (2025)
- The Clean Screen Habit (2016)
- Behind the scenes of bun install (2025)
- A Practitioner's Guide to Wide Events (2025)
- Performance is not a technical problem
- Ratchets
- Observability first (2026)
Productivity
- Work on what matters (2020)
- When everything is important but nothing is getting done (2020)
- Agile as trauma (2018)
- Coordination Headwind (2020)
- Fire and Motion (2002)
- Mandate Levels (2021)
- So You Messed Up! Now What? (2021)
- Two Big Things (2014)
- The Basics (2024)
- Work is Work (2020)
- When and how to say no at work (2022)
Design
- The Princess Rescuing Application (2008)
- Safe rules (2023)
- Family Values (2024)
- Sanding UI (2024)
- Guideliens (2025)
- Details that make interfaces feel better (2025)
Marketing
The Internet
Business
- The long, slow, SaaS ramp of death (2012)
- Becoming Data Driven, From First Principles (2024)
- Sales Advice for Founders (2023)
- Muse retrospective (2024)
- The STARS Framework (2023)
- Statistical Process Control: A Practitioner's Guide (2022)
- Avoid Blundering (2024)
- The Secret Heart Of Continuous Improvement (2024)
- Extreme Questions (2022)
- Schlep Blindness (2012)
- Big Blue (2024)
Miscellany
- Drink seltzer, live forever (2017)
- What Nothing Means: The Peculiar Pathos of Seinfeld Reruns (2013)
- What is code? (2015)
- Pleasure needs no politics (2021)
- How to Develop Good Taste (2022)
- How is Felix today? (2020)
- An App Can Be A Home-Cooked Meal (2020)
- In Praise of Passivity (2012)
- Obituary for a Quiet Life (2023)
- The animal is tired (2021)
- Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Facebook (2010)
- Trust the Process (2016)
- Coming Home (2024)
- The Communal Mind (2019)
- Practice Discomfort (2017)