Barlow beams as the escapement begins to rotate. His workshop is laced with tobacco and damp and the fading scent of industry.

In software engineering, complexity often masquerades as sophistication. Nowhere is this clearer than in frontend code that relies on inferential logic: the practice of deducing user intent or state based on limited information, rather than explicitly guiding the user experience.

Breakfasts in Cirebon are simple. Sickly sweet Coco Crunch with milk that never tastes quite right. On the humming fridge, three-quarters of the way up, is my first drawing, a cat with a jet engine for legs, crudely rendered in blue and red felt tip.

We seem to have stumbled into a strange contradiction: we demand perfection from our machines, while tolerating imperfection from ourselves. The same people who chuckle at human error in the workplace will denounce AI systems for the slightest misstep. "It hallucinated a fact!" Yes. And you never have?

The rapid rise of social media and digital platforms has reshaped global society, economics, and politics. Over the past two decades, America has notably thrived economically compared to Europe and other regions, which have experienced far slower growth. Rather than social media itself being inherently problematic, perhaps the real issue is what we've collectively lost in its ascendance—primarily local journalism, community vitality, and economic independence.

A week ago I tried switching my web browser's default search engine from Google to Perplexity.

I've always had a strong association between numbers and colours. It's not like I immediately perceive numbers as specific colours, so synesthesia in the traditional sense, but the associations are so strong and consistent that they feel almost automatic.

I've deleted my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.

Composition has always been my favourite pattern in React. For years, I pushed for it on every team I worked with. And for years, I got pushback.