Jeff H

How I design backend services CQRS is often associated with microservices and event-sourcing, but it stands alone as an excellent alternative to MVC design.

I've spent a ton of time on software architecture at all my various appointments over the years. One thing I've learned is how to build services that evolve, that last, and can be quickly understood by developers new to a given project. jeffersonheard.ghost.io/lesso-on-mic...

So you bought a tech company, now what? Part 1 of 2

No-one tells you this, but there's really *one* clear goal for the first few months after any acquisition that you intend to keep running: Show your acquired users and your new development team that there's real value for them in being a part of your company. jeffersonheard.ghost.io/so-you-bough...

leftists: that thing you teach us in school to be terrified of is happening

historians: that thing is definitely happening

star wars: here is a beat-for-beat breakdown of how the thing happens, but with pew pew lasers. we know you watched it

news outlets: these protesters are out of control

If I never have to read the all-capsed (or not) phrase "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER" again it will be too soon. Does he really think his Truth Social diarrhea is the equivalent of a letter from legal counsel? It's such an odd (and offputting) verbal tic.

Interruptions and Garden Paths An overlooked aspect of accessibility.

Over 10% of adults have ADHD, but ADHD is not part of accessibility standards or best practices. Design and engineering for ADHD accessibility is actually just good conscientious design. It helps everyone, not just people affected by ADHD and will naturally result in better retention, CSAT and NPS.

It seems at least two people on the internet need more social anxiety than they have. I have plenty to spare and am more than willing to offer it up.

Build or Buy. Grind or Automate. One thing I like to ask in diligence is how people in engineering and product judge the value of third-party software purchases. Sometimes these are buy vs. build decisions, but in others an engineer ...

There's a good chance you have engineers right now spending time and energy on problems that have already been solved by someone else. Figure out why people aren't asking for the right tools, and put more engineering energy on your core business problems.

Modeling data well I talk often about how modeling data should be done later in the process. If you start a new project with a models.py or com.mycompany.models.* or models/*.rb then you're putting the cart before the h...

I often say you should model your data last. What I haven't said is what that modeling should look like. In this post I talk about what I've learned about data modeling in more than a decade of SaaS work. jeffersonheard.ghost.io/modeling-dat...

Not the final final step but the punditry agrees this decision is unlikely to be overturned on appeal. Home stretch.

It still is. The very fact that I’m nervous about being seen replying to this says that it is. Survey some software developers in the USA and see how many reliably get weekends and evenings. Or get paid extra for “crunch time”

eight leatherbound books all titled "FERNS" volumes 1 through 8

Everyone in the past was neurotypical, which is how we got things like this single-author, eight-volume encyclopedia of ferns

The possibility that RFK Jr. is going to undermine herd immunity in the United States grows increasingly likely.

This would mean that US will be responsible for starting numerous pandemics and potentially destroying the effectiveness of the entire globe’s vaccine arsenal.

This is bioterrorism.

Oh look, appeasement, sanewashing, and "balance" that made Trump v. Biden seem like an issue reasonable people could disagree on didn't save NPR. How surprising.

Higher prices and supply problems for essential supplies combined with cuts to Medicaid will doom a lot of rural hospitals and offices as well. Much of our consumable medical supplies come from China. PPE, needles, swabs, gloves. Many of us out here don't see it yet, but we're being hung out to dry.

About the current #WorldCon kerfuffle. I read the statement. From my reading it looked reasonable. The way my partner read it, it wasn't. It's a bad statement. @seattlein2025.org, just show us the process. Vet the conchair as a panelist. Then show the prompt, the application, and the results.

Now they keep going back every 15 minutes or so just to check . Monsters live in our sewers. MUST PROTECT THE STUPID HUMANS!

T twisted it and it wiggled like a snake lashing about and Moose all but hit the ceiling, bounced off the wall, past my head, and ended up in the main part of the bathroom with his tail poofed a foot wide.

When I went upstairs to help T get it back down, Moose and Bitty were POINTING at it, CONCERNED.

We had to snake out the shower. We have to do that from below, because the shower drain is a fixed grate. There's a clean-out, so we opened that and put the snake in. But the snake is *just* wide enough to make it through one of the grate holes, and it popped up into the house.

We just recreated a scene from Aliens with the cats. It was everything it could be.

100 days.

100 days of lies, insults, injuries, and atrocities. 100 days of economic suicide. 100 days of dismantling. 100 days of grift. 100 days of extortion. 100 days of teach-the-controversy from the news media. 100 days of cowardice from Congress, who could end this.

100 days.

Avoiding Technology Tarpits: Ontology and Taxonomy Avoid, avoid, avoid starting a project by modeling your data in an ORM. Why? Because the temptation in data modeling is to model the "thing" perfectly instead of prioritizing your model by utility wit...

Two of the most common tarpits in creating software boil down to the fear that you're not creating enough value without including *everything*, imagining *every* possibility, and planning for gargantuan scale. jeffersonheard.com/avoiding-tec...

Your SaaS's most important trait is Evolvability In the world of commercial SaaS, your technology is always on a trajectory to become generic. Competition catches up. Broader trends change the way software is meant to look, feel, and be used. The lo...

Another article on software architecture principles for the EM, VP, or CTO. The whole point of software architecture is the ability to adapt to market change. I talk about how to do that so that you're always building good software.
jeffersonheard.com/your-saass-m...

What I talk about when I talk about Technical Debt. Communicating technical debt to people other than engineers is essential to getting work on that debt prioritized and valued alongside bugs and product roadmap work, and it’s not easy at all. One key ...

jeffersonheard.com/what-i-talk-... - It's been a couple of years and I've learned a lot, so I've revised my article on how to handle tech debt as an engineering leader. This has been my post popular article by far, so I felt like it was time to freshen it up!

So You Wanna Buy a Tech Company I've run the tech side of the M&A playbook now I think 10 times. I want to talk to fellow tech executives who are looking at acquiring a company about tech diligence and what it's for. In 2021 we bou...

jeffersonheard.com/so-you-wanna... I’ve been at the engineering helm of 10 M&As over my career, I’m starting to write out what I’ve learned about #techdiligence.

There’s a strain of person who would much rather believe that Americans aren’t doing anything to fight back than that they ARE fighting back and it hasn’t fixed things.

And look, I get it. It’s the same drive that says if you don’t bounce back from an illness, you must have done something wrong.

I’ll accept arguments over the merits of Joel or Mike or Jonah or Emily, but Pearl Forrester is the best mad, hands down.

You want to bring back the 1950's? Fine. tableroq.substack.com/p/but-they-j...

Flow (2024) ⭐ 7.9 | Animation, Adventure, Family 1h 25m | PG

So good to see Flow www.imdb.com/title/tt4772... nominated for best animated feature! I hope it wins. I don't think it's a shoe in, but it's certainly my favorite out of that lineup. I also loved The Wild Robot www.imdb.com/title/tt2962..., so I won't be sad if that takes it.

Production Python 1: Setting up FastAPI to talk to a “real” database. In which I talk about how to do real things in Python in real environments you might deploy to.

First in my series on Production Python. I hate that no-one documents how to correctly connect your API project to an RDS-like database, so I've done it here. #python #fastapi #postgresql