Erik Simmler

Internaut, software developer and irregular rambler

Recently (Feb 2019)

In no particular order.

Donā€™t Let the Internet Dupe You, Event Sourcing is Hard

Iā€™m grateful that I never had a chance to actually implement event sourcing in a non-trivial setting. I was a bit infatuated with the idea for a while, but Iā€™ve come to realize that there are more tradeoffs and complications than might be obvious at first glance. Still a cool technique for the right problem, but not a holy grail.

Dear Podcastersā€¦

Podcasting is still a space where sticking to open standards and interoperable implementations is the norm. It would be a profound shame for a powerful aggregator to gain and abuse too much power.

The Bike Shed 185: The Transactional Fallacy (Avdi Grimm)

Includes a nice, non-inflammatory discussion about what ā€œObject Orientedā€ actually means and why it is important to think about the flow of data and execution when building software.

Sensible Software Engineering

The way most contemporary software is built is structured around local optimums/maximums like Agile and TDDā€¦ Agile sacrifices long term vision for short term gains and TDD optimizes for writing more code to achieve correctness.

We Need Open Hosting Platforms

Iā€™m going to point out a depressing fact: open source products arenā€™t successfulā€¦ if maintaining open source is difficult and unsustainable, hosting that software is even worse.

No one cares how open and wonderful our software is if they canā€™t use it.

How to blog

Reminded me of the power of a ā€œrecentlyā€ post habit. Itā€™s nice to be more purposeful about recording things that Iā€™ve found interesting or useful over time.