August 2025

Time for another monthly post sharing some of the IT discoveries that crossed my path lately. Below you'll find a mix of articles, links, and resources, some of which tie into my current activities and areas of interest.

Some thoughts

The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project is widely recommended and often found on "must-read" lists for IT professionals. It's a novel about IT, DevOps, and helping your business win, co-authored by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. This format, a deliberate homage to Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal, makes complex concepts accessible and persuasive to a broad audience, including non-technical business leaders, acting as a "Trojan Horse" for organizational change.

The story follows Bill Palmer, a Director of Midrange Operations, who receives an unexpected "battlefield promotion" to VP of IT Operations at the fictional auto parts manufacturer, Parts Unlimited. His CEO, Steve Masters, gives him a stark ultimatum: fix the company's critical, over-budget, and behind-schedule "Phoenix Project" in 90 days, or the entire IT department will be outsourced. Bill is dropped into a state of perpetual crisis, characterized by failed change management, siloed conflicts, rogue actors like the CISO John, and systemic bottlenecks. Bill's mentor is Erik Reid, an eccentric prospective board member who reveals wisdom through quizzes and analogies to manufacturing plants, guiding Bill and his team to discover solutions.

The book introduces several main concepts:

Four types of work

Business Projects: Initiatives delivering new value to customers, like the Phoenix Project itself.
Internal IT Projects: Efforts enabling future business projects, such as infrastructure upgrades.
Changes: Modifications from planned work, including code deployments and patches.
Unplanned Work: The most destructive type, comprising emergency fixes and firefighting, which derails planned efforts and is a symptom of technical debt. Unplanned work is called the "silent killer" of productivity.

Three Ways

The First Way (Flow/Systems Thinking): Focuses on optimizing the entire system for fast, smooth, and predictable work delivery from Development through Operations to the customer. Practices include making work visible (e.g., Kanban boards), limiting Work-In-Process (WIP), and reducing batch sizes.
The Second Way (Amplifying Feedback Loops): Emphasizes rapid and constant feedback from Operations back to Development to catch and fix problems at the source, building quality into the system. Practices include swarming on problems and blameless post-mortems.
The Third Way (Continual Experimentation and Learning): Cultivates a high-trust, generative culture where experimentation is encouraged, and failure is an opportunity for learning. It institutionalizes improvement, transforming local discoveries into global knowledge.

Theory of Constraints (TOC)

This theory posits that a system's output is limited by its single greatest bottleneck. At Parts Unlimited, the primary constraint is personified by Brent, a brilliant but indispensable engineer crucial for every critical task. The solution involves re-engineering the system around him using Goldratt's Five Focusing Steps: identify, exploit, subordinate, elevate, and repeat.

My opinion: The book is definitely worth reading. It offers an interesting perspective on how DevOps evolved and how business interacts with IT. Its profound impact stems from providing a relatable blueprint for real-world organizational change, ultimately reframing IT from a siloed cost center into an integrated, strategic driver of business value. It is regarded as a foundational text for the DevOps movement, transforming it from a niche concept to a mainstream global philosophy.

Articles

I'm Worried It Might Get Bad | Daniel Miessler

AI generated summary

The article discusses the author's concerns about the economic situation in the US, focusing on rising costs, credit card debt, and the impact of AI on jobs. It warns of a potential cascade of negative effects leading to economic and social instability.

The 5 levels of communicating impact as an engineer

Perfect for performance reviews and resumes

Communicate like a Senior: Add the (right) context

How to avoid the back-and-forth and get unblocked quickly

Stop Solving Problems. Start Anticipating Them.

A practical guide to looking around corners, at work, in your career, and with your life.

The Path To Wisdom - Don't Learn From Your Mistakes

AI generated summary

The article argues that it's smarter to learn from other people's mistakes rather than your own. The author shares a personal story about a failed promotion attempt at Amazon, highlighting the importance of organizational support and learning from others.

ThinkPad designer David Hill dishes on unreleased models • The Register

The article is an interview with David W. Hill, the former lead designer of ThinkPad under IBM and Lenovo. Hill discusses his career, starting at IBM in 1985, and his involvement in the design of the ThinkPad series from 1995 to 2017. He shares insights into the development of iconic features like the butterfly keyboard and the TrackPoint nub. Hill also talks about his attempts to introduce more butterfly keyboards and a portable all-in-one desktop. He reflects on the evolution of the TrackPoint, including changes to its cap and height, and the introduction of the ThinkLight, an overhead light for keyboards. Hill expresses pride in the ThinkPad X300, developed after Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division, and his efforts to innovate within the constraints of the business.

The Art Of Productive Impatience - by Steve Huynh

The difference between being pushy and being productively impatient for your projects and career

Writing Your Own Simple Tab-Completions for Bash and Zsh :: The Mill Build Tool

This blog post by Li Haoyi, dated 7 August 2025, provides a comprehensive guide on setting up shell tab-completions for both Bash and Zsh. It addresses the challenges of creating tab-completions that work across different shells, particularly focusing on providing completion descriptions, which are typically available in Zsh but not in Bash. The post includes detailed code examples and explanations on how to implement basic tab-completion, add descriptions to Zsh completions, and hack Bash to show descriptions. It also covers how to display descriptions for single completions, enhancing the user experience when exploring unfamiliar CLI tools.

Productivity

journaling system cobbled together with nix, vim, coreutils · tangled

The page describes a journaling system created using Nix, Vim, and Coreutils, inspired by the Bullet Journal method.

I Tried Every Todo App and Ended Up With a .txt File - Alireza Bashiri

The author shares their journey of trying various productivity apps like Notion, Todoist, Things 3, OmniFocus, Asana, Trello, and Any.do, only to return to using a simple text file, todo.txt, for managing tasks.

Requiem for a 10x Engineer Dream - by Oskar Dudycz

People claim they get 10x productivity boosts with AI coding tools. After my recent experiments with Claude Code, I'm starting to think we're not using these tools the same way. Or that they’re just lying. Or both. See my story, and learn why you should not be like Gabriel!

How I Have Time For Everything - by Steve Huynh

You already have enough time. You just need to know what to do with it.

AI

AI and Open Source: Expanding Apache Airflow's Global Impact Through Collaboration - The Apache Software Foundation Blog

The article discusses the integration of AI in the open-source project Apache Airflow, focusing on translating its user interface into multiple languages. The challenge was to translate over 560 phrases while maintaining the open-source spirit of collaboration. The solution was a 'people-first, AI-assisted' approach, where contributors 'adopted' languages and used AI as a supportive tool.

Onboarding for coding agents - fuzzycomputer.com

How I shrunk my CLAUDE.md file to 13 lines

6 Weeks of Claude Code - Puzzmo Blog

AI generated summary

This blog post explores the author's six-week journey with Claude Code, an AI tool, highlighting various projects and tasks. The author reflects on the tool's capabilities, comparing it to a pair programming partner, and discusses its potential as a new way to build things.

My AI Code Prep & Cline Workflow for Budget Coding/Debugging (Part 1)

A personal guide on using AI Code Prep GUI, Cline, and various free AI web interfaces like Gemini, Grok, Deepseek, and Poe for cost-effective coding and debugging.

Claude Code Is All You Need

The article discusses the author's experiences using Claude Code, an AI tool, for various projects. The author describes building a HackerNews comment ranker plugin to filter out irrelevant comments, creating a Poster Maker as a minimal Canva replacement, and using Claude Code for administrative tasks like renaming bank statement files and merging them into a CSV. The author also shares their experience using Claude Code as a text editor, highlighting its strengths and limitations. Throughout the article, the author reflects on the capabilities of AI in design and writing, expressing both admiration and skepticism.

What the hell is going on right now?

AI generated summary

The article critiques the current tech environment where engineers face burnout and junior engineers misuse AI tools, leading to poor quality code. It questions the economic viability of AI companies and highlights the potential negative impact on learning and mentorship in engineering.

The reality of AI-Assisted software engineering productivity

AI generated summary

AI can significantly boost productivity in software development by handling repetitive tasks and aiding in documentation and onboarding. However, it struggles with complex legacy systems, autonomous coding, and creative problem-solving, requiring human oversight to ensure code quality and correctness.

Leading your engineers towards an AI-assisted future | Pete Hodgson

The article discusses a strategy for engineering leaders to adopt AI-assisted engineering within their organizations. It emphasizes the importance of starting with an experimentation phase to understand AI's capabilities and limitations, followed by adoption and impact phases. The approach involves setting clear goals, using metrics to track progress, and providing organizational support such as training and a Community of Practice. The article highlights the need for a balanced approach to AI adoption, encouraging engineers to engage with AI technology while maintaining human oversight in software design.

AGENTS.md

AGENTS.md is a simple, open format for guiding coding agents, used by over 20k open-source projects. Think of it as a README for agents.

Void

Void is an open source Cursor alternative. Full privacy. Fully-featured.

5 Tiny Phrases Every Engineer Should Use With AI

How to prevent "AI Slop"

Are people’s bosses really making them use AI tools? - Piccalilli

Andy Bell had heard companies were forcing employees to use AI tools so spoke to developers to determine if that was the case and learned some horrors in the process.

epicenter-so/epicenter · GitHub

Press shortcut → speak → get text. Free and open source. More local-first apps soon ❤️ - epicenter/apps/whispering at main · epicenter-so/epicenter

Gemini CLI GitHub Actions: AI coding made for collaboration

Today, we’re introducing Gemini CLI GitHub Actions. It’s a no-cost, powerful AI coding teammate for your repository. It acts both as an autonomous agent for critical routine coding tasks, and an on-demand collaborator you can quickly delegate work to.

Security

Vibe Coding: The Shadow IT Problem No One Saw Coming - The New Stack

Vibe coding promises easy AI-generated software but creates massive shadow IT risks for enterprises. Learn why this trend threatens security, compliance and scale.

Python

fstrings.wtf - Python F-String Quiz

Test your knowledge of Python's f-string formatting with this interactive quiz. How well do you know Python's string formatting quirks?

asyncio: a library with too many sharp corners

An explanation of some major issues with asyncio.

Python's asyncio: A Hands-On Walkthrough – Real Python

Explore how Python asyncio works and when to use it. Follow hands-on examples to build efficient programs with coroutines and awaitable tasks.

Tools

GitHub - denizsafak/abogen

Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text with synchronized captions.

Cloud

Lightning Fast Python on Google Cloud ⚡🐍

Google Cloud Shell now comes with uv (Python’s lightning fast project and package manager) pre-installed! Python development on Google Cloud just got a lot faster and easier as I am excited to…

Cloud Run and Docker collaboration | Google Cloud Blog

Cloud Run supports Docker Compose spec for multi-container and AI apps.

Other stuff

GitHub - mehdihadeli/awesome-software-architecture

📚 A curated list of awesome articles, videos, and other resources to learn and practice software architecture, patterns, and principles.

Learning Basic Electronics By Building FireFlies

AI generated summary

The author shares their experience of learning electronics by building a circuit to mimic fireflies. Starting with no knowledge, they learned about components like resistors and transistors, faced challenges, and used AI tools for guidance. The project resulted in creating blinking 'fireflies' that brought joy and a sense of achievement.

grug.design

The Grug Brained Designer

Videos

Just-in-Time Development with Django and HTMX: Faster, Leaner, and Smarter

Talk: Just-in-Time Development with Django and HTMX: Faster, Leaner, and Smarter by Thomas De Bonnet

Genspark AI: 6 Mega Praktycznych Zastosowań

Zmień komputer w asystenta (Claude Code 2025 poradnik)

AI generated summary

This YouTube video is a guide on how to turn your computer into an assistant using Claude Code 2025, likely focusing on productivity or automation.

Introducing GPT-5

Typing your Python code like a ninja! - Thiago Bellini Ribeiro

SekurakTV: Jak wygrywać CTF-y 2.0

Zapraszamy na szkolenie z Gynvaelem Coldwindem (szkolenie w języku polskim). Szkolenie potrwa ~4 godziny.

How to Configure Neovim for Python in 2025

AI generated summary

Henry Misc shares his Neovim setup for Python development, featuring auto-formatting, real-time linting, LSP integration, a debugger, and snippets, all built on kickstart.nvim.

I 3D Printed a Kayak in Less Than 24 hours

High School Dropout to Google Principal: Sundas Khalid Makes More from Content Than Her Tech Salary

AI generated summary

This video tells the inspiring story of Sundas Khalid, who went from being a high school dropout to a principal at Google, earning more from content creation than her tech salary.

AI generated summary

This video explores the process of running a popular homelab storage server on a Raspberry Pi, detailing the setup, challenges, and performance.