Andrew nails here many parts of what actually makes OSS maintaining hard work.
Empathy is needed more for OSS sustainability than money.
https://nesbitt.io/2026/02/13/respectful-open-source.html
“This new technology will replace developers!” is not a new thing.
Nice look at what some previous claims were (and how they resulted in more developers and more software).
https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html
Great take about the cultural requirements to create “10x engineers”
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/sometimes-your-job-is-to-stay-the-hell-out-of-the-way/
All the “faster Homebrew in Rust” projects are a bit like parsing HTML with regex.
The simplest use-cases seem to work, it’s easier and there’s just edge cases to fix.
Fixing these edge cases requires recreating Homebrew and using Ruby (which will be slower again).
27 January 2026
Interviewed by Screaming in the Cloud
This analysis was both helpful and hurtful.
Another reminder to focus on a single task and ship to completion whenever possible.
https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/one-bottleneck-at-a-time/
16 January 2026
Interviewed by freeCodeCamp Podcast
“The Failure Mode of Clever (is asshole)”
Applies to some OSS commenters I’ve seen…
Great take from John Scalzi (who also writes GREAT sci-fi books).
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-clever/
Anil has a decent framework here for thinking if you’ll actually be happy in a job.
https://anildash.com/2026/01/12/will-that-job-crush-your-soul/
Great and nuanced take from creator of Redis.
If you’re still in the “these tools are useless” camp or “these tools are unethical so I won’t use them”: you’ve not understood how things have already changed.
13 January 2026
Like many people who now work with computers, I was told as a child I spent “too much time on screens” and then built a career out of it.
I like this take on how to get promoted.
My experience has been that promotions come from finding and doing important work.
Being spoon-fed is fine for juniors but a negative signal for those seeking e.g. staff+ promotions.
https://andrew.grahamyooll.com/blog/Try-to-Take-My-Position/
I find myself referring too often to the “is it worth the time?” xkcd.
This works best when the person doing the automation is also the person saving the time.
It’s that time of year again to look at your calendar like Marie Kondo and ask:
“Does this (meeting) spark joy?”
If not: try to cancel or shorten it.
Would love it if people expressing strong opinions about open source declared what project(s) they’ve maintained and for how long. Would help weed out the uninformed.
Strongly agree with “The Move Faster Manifesto”. This matches my experiences at GitHub, Homebrew, Workbrew. You can also be fast and sustainable.
https://brianguthrie.com/p/the-move-faster-manifesto/
I agree with Sean here. The industry default seems to be “idealistic about engineering, cynical about management”. Things work better if you’re a little cynical about both.
https://www.seangoedecke.com/a-little-bit-cynical/
This analysis of Valve’s approach to hardware was really interesting. I have bought all their hardware and will likely buy all the new stuff and this helps explain why.
https://www.garbagecollected.dev/p/valve-the-reverse-apple
Using Docker for local development on macOS is like putting a shipping container in your garden instead of buying a cupboard from IKEA.
18 December 2025
I’ve been following what Justin Searls has been doing with his blog for some time. He’s been leaning into the “POSSE” (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) philosophy more and more. In practice, this looks like building your own version of a single-serving social network on your own site and exposing RSS/Atom feeds to other services to consume. Justin recently released POSSE Party which makes this easier by cross-posting to various social networks. I’ve complained for a while about (anti)social networking so I’m always up for new ways to use social networking less.
I’ve added “thoughts” to my website. If these work correctly, they will be cross-posted to various social networks. Thanks to Justin Searls’ POSSE Party for enabling this.
09 December 2025
The process of software estimation is frustrating for software engineers and those who consume their estimates. Consumers often ask “why can these software engineers not just tell me when it will be done?”.
24 October 2025
In tech, 3 years is often considered a “long tenure”. We maintain open-source projects for 2 years, then burn out. We start habits, lose momentum and quit.