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Your First HPDE - Getting On Track
Driving

Your First HPDE - Getting On Track

I started track driving about 5 years ago. It's expensive, noisy, and non-productive. Its also one of the absolute purest joys of my life. If you're interested - even if you don't think you could ever do it - read on!

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford May 16, 2022 • 6 min read
Overly Complex SDKs
Development

Overly Complex SDKs

Good SDKs make writing service code easy. Why do so many of them stop just short of where they should?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Mar 9, 2022 • 2 min read
Chex Mix

Chex Mix

Chex Mix should be yours. Use this recipe as a starting point - or not - but adjust it until you can't stop making it. Then back off one notch.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Dec 24, 2021 • 2 min read
Disposability
12 Factor

Disposability

Normalize not knowing where - or to some extent why - your processes are. And never, ever, name a server (sorry saruman37)

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Dec 14, 2021 • 1 min read
Concurrency
12 Factor

Concurrency

Sometimes its okay to be a monolith. Or at least one monolith amongst many.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Dec 8, 2021 • 1 min read
Car shown may not match actual race vehicle ;-)
Driving

Race Day

Hanging on to the back of the reasonably decent racers may not be a winning strategy, but it doesn't seem like a losing one either.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Nov 24, 2021 • 1 min read
Boilerplate is just Tech Debt waiting to happen
Development

Boilerplate is just Tech Debt waiting to happen

Our goal as developers should be to write as much business logic as possible, and spend as little time as possible on anything else. Here's why that matters.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Nov 24, 2021 • 2 min read
Package Based Development
Development

Package Based Development

Thanks a pervasive culture of sharing, almost everything that we write can be thought of as refinements, gluing existing components together and adding only the parts of the code that are truly unique to whatever we're trying to build. It's a great time to be a software developer.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Oct 26, 2021 • 5 min read
MSR Cresson in the Challenge Miata
Driving

MSR Cresson in the Challenge Miata

Someone has to bring the slowest car...

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Oct 20, 2021 • 3 min read
Papertrail
Resource Basics

Papertrail

Keeping track of what's going on in your remotely running stateless servers can be a challenge, but it doesn't have to be a chore.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 24, 2020 • 2 min read
Port Binding
12 Factor

Port Binding

Making sure that you have a single, simple, well-understood entry point to your service.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 22, 2020 • 1 min read
The Benefits of Keeping it Simple
Development

The Benefits of Keeping it Simple

Everything must be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. But why?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 16, 2020 • 2 min read
Processes
12 Factor

Processes

State belongs in clients and database, nowhere in between.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 15, 2020 • 2 min read
Ask for Actions but Deliver on Intent
Tech talk

Ask for Actions but Deliver on Intent

When building a UI, a small change in the way that you think about the user's requests can significantly change the way that you communicate about exceptional conditions.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 10, 2020 • 2 min read
Build, Release, Run
12 Factor

Build, Release, Run

Strictly separate build and run stagesWhat problem are we solving?Builds should be repeatable, trivial, and boring. If you can build your application twice in a row on different servers and get different results than you have a problem. Additionally, the build should be hands-off.  If your build or release

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 8, 2020 • 3 min read
MSR Houston CCW Track Day
Driving

MSR Houston CCW Track Day

My first DE at MSR Houston going counter clockwise

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 4, 2020 • 3 min read
Date Handling
Development

Date Handling

Dates are invisible and obvious, until they're not. Luckily a little thought and a few common strategies will keep them as boring as they seem.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 2, 2020 • 3 min read
Backing Services
12 Factor

Backing Services

How should you incorporate 3rd party services, and their configurations, into your SaaS app? Are they just another dependency or something more?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jul 1, 2020 • 2 min read
Don't Forget the V
Tech talk

Don't Forget the V

When it comes to MVPs, everyone loves to focus on the M for Minimal. Especially when working in a B2B environment, the Viable portion is all too often neglected.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 26, 2020 • 2 min read
Config
12 Factor

Config

How and where should you be storing runtime configuration, especially secrets?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 24, 2020 • 4 min read
Dependencies
12 Factor

Dependencies

How and where do you define, update, and import your dependencies?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 17, 2020 • 3 min read
Mockaroo
Resource Basics

Mockaroo

Good test data helps you see problems that bad test data obscures. Thankfully there's an easy way to get large amounts of it.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 12, 2020 • 2 min read
Codebase
12 Factor

Codebase

How many codebases make up a deployable? How many deployable can you build from one codebase?

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 10, 2020 • 5 min read
Don’t Be Afraid to Cheat
Development

Don’t Be Afraid to Cheat

Its easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees and get so caught up in solving a technical problem that we don't stop to consider how we could take a shortcut and work around it instead.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 4, 2020 • 4 min read
12 Factor Applications
12 Factor

12 Factor Applications

The 12 Factor “manifesto” was written by Adam Wiggins back in 2012 and has become something of a template for building scalable, modern applications in the RESTful era. Find out how it can help you write simple, scalable software for the modern age.

  • Richard Stanford
Richard Stanford Jun 4, 2020 • 2 min read
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