Reading the standard library

The team I learned the most from didn't have great tools. They had a great habit of reading each other's pull requests in full, including the parts that weren't theirs.

I split a 4000-line file into 12 smaller ones this week. The smaller files weren't actually easier to understand. The 4000-line file was a problem of structure, not of length.

When a system surprises me, my first instinct used to be to fix the surprise. Now my first instinct is to figure out which mental model of mine was wrong, and update that.

I used to add a layer of abstraction the first time I saw a pattern repeat. Now I wait for the third. The waiting is uncomfortable, but the abstractions that survive that wait tend to last.

Latency budgets work better than latency targets. Targets are aspirational. Budgets force you to delete features when you go over.