Articles.

Before opening the editor, week one is spent reading what the system actually did yesterday

Inherited spaghetti code: the first 7 days, in order

Inherited spaghetti code from a vendor that left? The order of the first 7 days: what to measure before writing a line, what to freeze, and how it turns into three timelines.

Sep 30

Automated review approves the shape of the code, never the intent behind it

AI code review: how far you can take the human out

AI code review approves what a rule can verify. Anything that changes business behaviour still needs a person. Where to draw the line, and the month-14 bill.

Sep 28

The new debt arrives in the pull request approved in four minutes

Technical debt from AI coding agents: how to measure the bill

Technical debt written by coding agents never shows up as a bug, it shows up as schedule. Three counts you can run this afternoon, plus what to change in code review.

Sep 23

Know-how gets priced at the diligence table, not on the software line of the balance sheet

Trade secret valuation: pricing the know-how inside your code

Trade secret valuation runs on replacement cost, income attribution and comparables. How to inventory your business rules and build the evidence buyers ask for in diligence.

Sep 21

In ticket triage, the model's mistake is the wrong queue, and wrong queues can be counted

AI that picks vs AI that writes: where each belongs in your system

Closed decisions (classify, route, validate) call for a model that picks and errors you can count. Free text needs human review. How to decide and test it, with Jev as the case.

Sep 18

The first question is the simplest: what can you open on your phone when the sprint ends

App developers for hire: 5 questions to ask before you sign

Five questions a non-technical founder can ask app developers for hire to spot a failing project in month one, plus freelancer vs fixed-bid vs dedicated team.

Sep 18

The upgrade ticket that never makes the sprint is the one that turns into a frozen quarter

Incremental migration vs big-bang: what each one costs your roadmap

Upgrades of the same tech belong in every sprint. A different tech is a project, and even that ships in slices. What each path costs and where the rule breaks.

Sep 15

The cores are busy around the clock. The question is who is on the other end.

Scraper traffic is inflating your cloud bill: how to measure it

At git.kernel.org, 14 CPU cores do nothing but render pages for scrapers, more than all legitimate access combined. How to split bots from humans in your logs first.

Sep 9

The fifth question is the one nobody answers without opening the repository

AI software development without architecture: 5 checks before month six

Building with AI without architecture breaks around month six. Five checks you can run without reading code, what each answer means, and the cheaper path before a rewrite.

Sep 4

6min read

The platform everyone called obsolete can still tell you what it did yesterday

Mainframe and AI: legacy modernization is about missing logs and owners, not age

CIO Dive reports AI agents helped sustain confidence in the mainframe. Three checks that tell you whether your system is legacy, and what to do about each one.

Sep 2

The rule that decides commission usually lives in three places at once, with different values

Thousands of IF/THEN/ELSE rules: code, engine or spreadsheet

Rules that change weekly belong in versioned data with an owner. Rare rules stay as ifs. When a rules engine pays off, and what the finance spreadsheet really costs.

Aug 31