The system was in production. It worked. And it was built without version control, using Perl...
Developer fired for presenting critical feedback on a legacy production system (Perl, PHP, stored procedures) built by the CEO; leadership interpreted architectural analysis as personal rejection. In the AI era, building software becomes trivial while validation remains hard; the skill edge shifts to choosing what not to build and accepting when market reality contradicts your investment.
The system was in production.
It worked.
And it was built without version control, using Perl scripts, ad-hoc PHP files, PostgreSQL stored procedures, and JasperReports.
From a modern engineering perspective, it looked like a disaster.
And yet — it had been running for years.
Three years into my career, I raised my hand for a job that more senior engineers on the team had...
It started as a spreadsheet. Someone created it to solve a small problem. A few months later: More...
The other day I watched an engineer spend three days on a piece of the codebase nobody had touched in...
My first day at a real software engineering job. I opened the codebase. Twenty thousand lines of...
A code-review gig at an EdTech startup turned into rebuilding the system, the operations, and eventually the business model.…
Building in public, Part 1 I've been writing code since 1996. No degree. Just thirty years of...
