Hi, I'm David.
An engineering leader who loves writing about software, the teams that build it, and where engineering crosses into product and design.
Latest posts
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Tested by accident
I accidentally deleted my website this weekend. The forced rebuild was the first real-pressure test of the standards-first experiment I wrote about a few days ago. The standards held — and revealed what is still unfinished.
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Slop is a standards problem
AI slop is real. The diagnosis is wrong. Slop is what AI does when no one sets the standard — and the same technology can elevate the bar instead, if you choose to use it that way.
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Evolving Agile in the age of AI agents
The agile practices that survived AI-assisted development weren't the process ones — they were the philosophical ones. A look at what changed and what stayed when building a real product with AI agents.
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The incomplete history of Design Tokens
A thirty-year story about a single idea: that design decisions should be named, shared, and separated from the things they style — from Håkon Wium Lie's 1994 proposal to the W3C specification.
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Goal-Driven Development with AI Agents
Starting with a real problem — the "did we get cinnamon sticks?" moment in the kitchen — and figuring out the solution as you go. Part 1 of a series on building a real product with AI agents.
Featured
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iframes vs Web Components — which one actually performs better in 2025?
After 102 automated Playwright tests, Web Components load 4.5× faster than iframes with identical memory use. A data-driven guide to when each isolation mechanism is the right call.
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The 2000 Year-old Engineering Manager
What if the best advice for engineering managers was written 2,000 years ago? A talk on leadership, stoicism, and staying calm under pressure.
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Calm above the water, and paddling like hell underneath
A personal account of overcoming a lifelong fear of public speaking — from hiding under a slide in the rain at age 12 to presenting at Respond 2014 in Sydney. On the years of small steps, SydCSS, and what it actually takes to walk to the front of the room.
