One warm context beats five cold ones
Per-layer workers each pay full context assembly. Loading once and generating inline amortises it — and the measured saving was smaller than estimated.
On-Device AI
When a local model beats the API, and the three numbers that decide it
The crossover is computable, the three numbers disagree with each other, and almost nobody computes any of them.
Just published
When a local model beats the API, and the three numbers that decide itThe scoping conversation that stops a project going wrong in month threeMost productivity advice fails engineers, and the reason is measurableA bigger context window gave me a worse answer, repeatablyDay 100100 days of Compose: the eight ideas the other ninety-nine posts kept circling
Deep divesthe longest reads
I measured my own tooling for a month and deleted half of it
Most of a toolchain is habit rather than measured benefit.
Scope creep is a contract problem, not a communication problem
Being clearer about the scope does not stop it changing. A written change process does.
An estimate is a distribution, and you reported the mode
Two weeks means the most likely case. What anyone planning around you needs is the spread.
Is this derived thing current? Make it a comparison
Staleness checked by timestamp or by memory fails quietly. A digest of the declared inputs, stamped beside the output, makes currency a comparison.
An agent drove a KMP app to the Play Store. The codegen was the easy half.
Autonomous codegen produces an app that compiles; what makes it one that ships is a gate stack refusing any claim that carries no evidence.
Pin a commit, not a branch, when someone rehosts your images
A branch URL serves whatever the branch holds now, and a platform that rehosts your images keeps its copy forever. The pin must be immutable.
Writing my own performance review honestly, for once
Listing what I shipped is not the review. Listing what changed for other people is.
100 Days of Compose
100 of 100 →
100 days of Compose: the eight ideas the other ninety-nine posts kept circling
A hundred days of Jetpack Compose, written by following the official documentation end to end. The APIs are many and the ideas are few; here are the eight that kept recurring, and an honest account of what the exercise missed.
- 99Glance looks like Compose and compiles to RemoteViews, which explains every limitation6 min
- 98Notifications are the one UI you can't build in Compose8 min
- 97Predictive back turns a commitment into a preview, and your BackHandler can break it8 min
- 96There are three kinds of inset, and using the wrong one is why your keyboard fights your layout7 min
- 95Edge-to-edge stopped being a choice, and most apps found out from a bug report8 min
Sections
All sections →229EngineeringCompose, Kotlin, and multiplatform work — the mechanism under the symptom.36AI-Driven DevelopmentShipping production software with coding agents — context, evals, guardrails, and what breaks at scale.27AgentsDriving AI agents to software that is verified on a real device, not just compiled.27ShippingStores, signing, provisioning, CI — the archaeology between "it builds" and "it is live".21On-Device AIModels that run on the phone — Gemini Nano, ML Kit, Core ML, and the latency and privacy maths behind them.15GrowthThe business half — search, audience, and what solo distribution actually costs.1NotesShort field notes — one problem, one cause, one fix.
—LifeWorking, learning, and the parts of this that aren't code.Nothing here yet
Latest
All posts →
The scoping conversation that stops a project going wrong in month three
Scope failures are discovered late and paid for by the engineer. These are the questions that surface them early.
Most productivity advice fails engineers, and the reason is measurable
Advice built for shallow task-switching inverts when the task takes forty minutes to hold in your head.
A bigger context window gave me a worse answer, repeatably
What you leave out of a context pack is a design decision, not waste.
100 days of Compose: the eight ideas the other ninety-nine posts kept circling
A hundred days of Jetpack Compose, written by following the official documentation end to end. The APIs are many and the ideas are few; here are the eight that kept recurring, and an honest account of what the exercise missed.
Glance looks like Compose and compiles to RemoteViews, which explains every limitation
Glance lets you write widgets in Compose-like Kotlin, but it emits RemoteViews rather than drawing. Knowing that explains the missing modifiers, the absent animations, and why state works the way it does.
Notifications are the one UI you can't build in Compose
A notification is rendered by the system UI, not your app, so Compose plays no part in its appearance. What a Compose app owns is the permission flow, the deep link, and the back stack the user lands in.
If this was useful, you can support the series.
356 posts so far, written and published solo — no paywall and no sponsor copy.