Short thoughts that are cross-posted to X (Twitter), Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Threads.
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).
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/
“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.
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.
