Field Notes
- November 4, 2025development The Software Developer's Ethos
- November 4, 2025FAVORITE ★ The Software Developer's Ethos
The Readme — Software
Making things is the part of life that never rotated out. The tools never stop changing — and I’ve come to believe that staying a learner, always, is the priceless part. Right now that mostly means AI-assisted development, and it has pulled me straight back to my teenage years, when a few lines of code first felt like magic. Same fascination, new instruments — built end-to-end for the joy of shipping. This is the technical corner of an otherwise personal magazine.
The Development network, drawn as a transit map. Each line is a discipline, and the stations run in riding order — every stop builds on the one before it (you board at C# before you ride LINQ; MSTest before Playwright). Large rings are interchanges, tools serving two lines at once; filled stations are Microsoft rolling stock. The Operations side of the railway — and every tool not shown — runs in the full inventory below.
The map above is the curated network. The full inventory — every tool, expandable — follows: click a node's circle to open it, click its text to open the tool's site, drag to pan, scroll to zoom.
One habit under all of it — never write the same thing twice — and one order I hold: trustworthy data, then working software, then a usable flow, then bank-grade stability, and the interface last.
Ship the simple thing, watch it survive contact with reality, repair what breaks. Working software beats elegant intention.
Defaults are suggestions. Own every layer you depend on — read the source, question the framework, automate what repeats.
Build teams the way you build systems: hire above yourself, delegate whole problems, and keep the interfaces honest.
Every repo here is public and MIT-licensed.
AI agent workflows, custom skills, and coding standards for bootstrapping Copilot-powered projects.
Further entries being declassified.