Articles

The Ivy Lee Method: A 100-Year-Old Productivity Hack That Still Works

August 20, 2025

Discover the 100-year-old Ivy Lee Method—a simple daily routine of six tasks that can sharpen focus, build momentum, and boost productivity.


From Stress Test to Skills Test: A Smarter Approach to Technical Interviews

August 14, 2025

Stop testing nerves. Start testing skills. Here’s a coding interview that’s fair, real, and actually worth everyone’s time.


Mind the Gap

August 4, 2025

Promotions go to those who do the job before they get the title. Discover how to mind the gap and position yourself for the next step in your career.


I Got Laid Off. Now What?

July 25, 2025

I got laid off. Then came the questions: what happened, what now, and what’s next? This is a personal reflection on losing a job, dealing with the aftermath, and finding a way forward.


Making the Most of Your 1-1s

March 16, 2023

1-1s are intended for the team member, not the manager. In this article we look at how we come to that conclusion and what we can do to make the most of our 1-1s.


The Team Refactor Meeting

April 11, 2022

With everything we have to do, is another meeting necessary? It is if you want to engage your engineering staff and taking ownership over the product they work on.


Elixir Processes: Testing

June 27, 2020

Thinking in processes is already difficult; writing automated tests for those processes shouldn't make it worse. Elixir provides the necessary tooling to ensure your processes are rock solid. This article explains how to use them.


Elixir Processes: Observability

May 29, 2020

Observability in most programming languages is really just guesswork, but Elixir gives you the tools to know exactly what's happening in your processes and applications. This article shows you how.


Elixir Processes: Linking and Monitoring

April 16, 2020

Erlang's motto is "Let it crash." But what then? What do you do with a dead process and how do you even know it's passed on? Linking and monitoring is the answer, but which one do you choose and when? Let's find out.


Elixir, Poolboy, and Little's Law

March 14, 2020

Most programming languages use thread pools to improve performance; in Elixir, we use them to constrain our applications. In this article, we explore both why and how to do that with the excellent Poolboy library.


Elixir Processes: Spawn, Send, and Receive

December 8, 2019

All of OTP is built on a handful of process primitives. In this article, we'll explore three in particular – spawn, send, and receive – to see how they work together.


Understanding Elixir's Broadway

October 21, 2019

Broadway is Plataformatec's fourth attempt at streamlining the retrieval and processing of data in Elixir. This article gives you a glimpse into that journey, provides a deeper understanding of the library, giving you everything you need to build your own Broadway application.


Elixir Telemetry: Metrics and Reporters

September 2, 2019

For measurements to be valuable, they must be collated into metrics. Elixir's Telemetry.Metrics library enables us to aggregate measurements from functions and processes into valuable metrics to aid us in making decisions about our projects.


Just Enough Erlang

August 1, 2019

Erlang can be an intimidating language, but it doesn't have to be. This article explores the more common features with the goal of enabling you to more easily include Erlang libraries in your Elixir projects, and to read and understand the documentation.


The "How"s, "What"s, and "Why"s of Elixir Telemetry

June 24, 2019

It's commonly quoted that 'What gets measured gets managed,' but how do you do that? Elixir's Telemetry library enables you to stop worrying about *how* to capture your system's data and more time thinking about *what* data to capture.


The Google Fast

May 9, 2019

Is there anything to be gained by not using search engines? Do we rely on them too much and think too little?


Elixir Protocols

March 31, 2019

A look into what Elixir protocols are, why we should use them, how to implement a protocol on a struct or type, and finally how to create our own.


My System for Rating Books

February 17, 2019

Literally a exposition of what parameters I consider for rating a book on a 1-5 star scale.


Phoenix Templates: Rendering and Layouts

January 1, 2019

In this article we look at how to render templates from within Views, Controllers, and even other Templates. We also look at how to work with Layouts and Nested Layouts.


Phoenix Templates

December 16, 2018

A look at why Phoenix templates are so performant and an introduction into how to build them.


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