Nearly three decades building systems — from dial-up ISPs to cloud infrastructure to architecture at scale. Currently Chief Architect at SAP Concur. Based in Redmond, WA.
Fallacies of Distributed Computing talk. GraphQL Summit 2016 panelist — "Scaling GraphQL for Production." 17-year Stack Overflow member. Arctic Code Vault contributor.
Understand the problem, not the checkboxes. Every tool has a philosophy underneath it. Feature comparison is journalism. Understanding why something matters — that's engineering.
Distributed systems lie to you. I gave a talk on the Fallacies of Distributed Computing years ago. The fallacies haven't changed. Neither has the number of people who learn them the hard way.
The right abstraction is worth waiting for. Don't use a framework until it solves real pain. Don't reach for a dependency until you've felt the gravity of the problem it addresses. Shortcuts are earned, not assumed.
Ship it, then make it beautiful. Perfectionism in production is a virtue. Perfectionism before production is procrastination.