04 ·Field notes
Field notes.
Decisions worth arguing about, with the code on the table.
01Read article →10/13/2026 · 5 min read
The ship of Theseus: migrating a website without it becoming another one
If you replace every plank of a ship, is it still the same ship? Every website migration answers that question, usually without noticing.
- #philosophy
- #migrations
- #architecture
- #judgment
02Read article →9/1/2026 · 5 min read
The bug that doesn't exist: Gorgias and the error nobody can reproduce
Gorgias argued that nothing exists, that if it did we couldn't know it, and that if we knew it we couldn't communicate it. An intermittent bug walks through all three.
- #philosophy
- #debugging
- #observability
- #judgment
03Read article →8/1/2026 · 5 min read
The river and the stone: what should flow and what should stay still
Heraclitus and Parmenides argued over whether reality changes or endures. Every application settles that argument each time it decides where a value lives.
- #philosophy
- #architecture
- #data
- #decisions
04Read article →7/1/2026 · 5 min read
The button I didn't build: practical wisdom for deciding what gets shipped
Aristotle separated knowing how to do something from knowing whether it should be done. The second one decides whether a feature earns its place.
- #philosophy
- #judgment
- #product
- #decisions
05Read article →6/1/2026 · 7 min read
The art of naming: a name is judged by whoever uses it
Plato gave a whole dialogue to whether names are correct by nature or by agreement. The argument is alive every time someone opens an editor.
- #philosophy
- #naming
- #readability
- #craft
06Read article →5/1/2026 · 7 min read
Ockham's razor and code: against premature abstraction
Every layer you add is a claim about the future. Ockham asked us not to multiply entities; Epicurus explained why a concept with no experience behind it says nothing.
- #philosophy
- #architecture
- #simplicity
- #decisions
07Read article →4/1/2026 · 6 min read
The right moment: technical judgment and shipping speed
The Greeks had two words for time. Almost every argument about shipping fast uses the wrong one.
- #judgment
- #product
- #architecture
- #decisions
08Read article →3/1/2026 · 7 min read
Epistemology for developers: who checks the tests
The ancient sceptics asked what criterion validates the criterion. A green suite has the same problem, and almost nobody puts it that way.
- #philosophy
- #testing
- #judgment
- #architecture