Cate Huston · engineering leadership
Engineering an Interesting Life.
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Is the software factory working?
→: Is the software factory working?When we replatformed Twill, we built a software factory: agents write most of the code, a merge queue lands it, CI decides what gets through. Which means there’s a lot of activity, and every release I cut (several a week) includes a list of changes. But I need to know if the factory is working.…
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Good Architecture Is a Function of Time
→: Good Architecture Is a Function of TimeEngineers, we use a lot of words to talk about architecture, but at a fundamental level, I think architecture is about making good decisions easier, on a timeframe you can reason about. → Small startups can’t reason about a long timeframe, so architecture has limited ROI.→ Banks have requirements around audit trails and – for…
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Nine Months of The Spreadsheet: What AI Taught Me About How I Work
→: Nine Months of The Spreadsheet: What AI Taught Me About How I WorkIn February I wrote about The Spreadsheet: one tab per week, a column for each area of my life, and a green/yellow/red rating for impact and vibe. Every Monday I feed it to Claude and ask “how did I do?” and “what can I learn?” Nine months in, I’m still doing it. And with that…
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Book: Obviously Awesome
→: Book: Obviously AwesomeI’ve been trying to learn marketing lately. I would not say it’s going well. I started with a Coursera course, and one module in I was so frustrated by the pseudo-scientific framing. Some of it was actually scientific (I recognised Sheena Iyengar‘s work) and some of it only seemed so. Claude told me I should…
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