There are many like it, but this one is mine.
“Software Factories” have become all the rage recently. I saw one HN comment compare them to the Cambrian explosion of JS frameworks back in simpler times and that’s pretty accurate. Before we go further, let’s (attempt) to define “Software Factory”. At its most basic, I think it means a tool that manages multiple agents to accomplish a goal while moving tasks through the workflow, involving humans in decisions without requiring them to manually coordinate agents. The ability to go from idea -> PR, if not “deployed”, without needing to babysit agents. For me this is powerful because there is a cap on how many agents I can directly manage and keep track of. I want a list of things that need my attention or approval, and tasks only I can do, while the agentic loops run in the background. Another important concept is a system of checks or an enforced “pipeline” that tasks should go through (Example: Plan -> Review -> Human Gate -> Execute -> Review -> Fix issues (loop till done) -> Human Gate). And accomplishing all of that without just shuffling text between agents yourself.
iRant: Birthday Alerts
Dear Apple, This might be hard to fathom but I have many people in my contacts that I don’t really care about. People from previous phases of my life or just people I’ve fallen out of contact with over the years. For years I’ve put up with 9am being the time of day I get…
iRant: Find My Teases ETA
While I generally enjoy using my various Apple devices, there are some major pain points and endless minor papercuts that I run into every day. Some of these would be understandable, even acceptable, in the v1 of a given service/app but instead of being fixed, they linger for years, untouched by the glacial yearly OS…
Nightly Postgres Backups via GitHub Actions
Recently I wanted to set up nightly backups of my Postgres databases hosted on Neon.tech. Yes, they have backups and PITR but I knew I’d feel better if I had backups just in case. My business runs on AWS and so S3 was the obvious destination. I took this as an opportunity to look into…
Kroger’s Digital Struggle
I’ll start by saying that I know nothing about the grocery store industry. But what I do know is technology and UI/UX. I’ve seen improvements in Kroger’s apps and its website over the past few years but it continues to lag behind its competitors. Not its fellow grocers, of which there seem to be few,…
The Use Case for Mac Virtual Display
I’ll be honest, I still think Mac Virtual Display (MVD) for the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) is lackluster. Though I think I have a better understanding of why some reviewers or tech bloggers/enthusiasts have sung it’s praises. I also think they will not be waxing quite as poetic after a week or two of use.…
Apple Vision Pro or $4K?
The Apple Vision Pro (AVP) is quite amazing. The picture quality is the best I’ve experienced, the UI/UX is top notch in typical Apple fashion, but I don’t find myself craving it. Sure the first few days it was super cool but I think I enjoyed blogging about it almost as much as using it,…
Apple Vision Pro: Writing Code
So yesterday I posted about my first impressions on the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) and I wanted to expand a bit on using the Mac Virtual Display feature. As I said yesterday, I do not see this replacing my external monitors. In part because you only get 1 monitors in AVP and also because the…
Apple Vision Pro: First Impressions
Let me start by saying the Apple Vision Pro (AVP, sorry Apple, I’m not typing it out each time) is an amazing product but it has some significant limitations. I am still undecided on whether I will keep it or return it as my original main use case (replacement of my MBP monitors) isn’t up…
Securing all your self-hosted apps with Single Sign-on
There are multiple approaches to how best secure your self-hosted apps as well as multiple ways to reverse proxy your self-hosted apps but today I will focus on how I use Caddy, http.login plugin, and the http.jwt plugin to secure my apps. I have a number of self-hosted apps running on my home network and…
