Why I Still Trust Make Over Modern Build Tools
A contrarian defense of Make (1976) over modern JavaScript build tools. Make is boring, understood, and still works. Modern tools are complex, break often, and solve problems Make already solved....
Web Spy: The Personal Web Crawler I Never Released
I built Web Spy - a desktop app that crawled and cached websites for offline reading. This was before HTTrack, before Pocket, before Instapaper. Never shipped it....
Write Your Own Build Scripts
Build tool complexity has gotten out of control. A 50-line shell script often does the job better than any framework....
Why Engineers Should Own Their Build System
Build systems have become black boxes that nobody understands. When they break, teams are helpless. Here's the case for simpler builds that engineers actually control....
The Framework Treadmill: Why We Keep Relearning the Same Problems
The JavaScript framework ecosystem keeps solving the same problems with new syntax every 2-3 years. State management, routing, data fetching - we've reinvented these solutions dozens of times since 20...