Excellence Leadership Mastery The Forge | Articles Concepts Series Books Archive

Category: Tech

Browse all articles in the Tech category. Here you'll find insights, tips, and exploration of topics related to tech.

Explore diverse perspectives on tech through practical advice, thought-provoking analysis, and real-world examples.

Craft Leadership

Stop Paying for Sweat. Your Best AI Users Are Learning to Fake It.

Most leaders judge work by how hard it looked. That shortcut held up while hours and output moved together. AI pulled them apart. Keep rewarding the long night and the forty-page deck, and the people who use the model best will learn to slow down, pad the work, and stop telling you how they did it.

Stop Paying for Sweat. Your Best AI Users Are Learning to Fake It.
Craft

Centaur Chess Already Told You Where You Fit Next to AI

In 2005 two amateurs with three ordinary computers won a chess tournament against grandmasters who had engines of their own. That story gets told as proof that human plus AI always wins. The ending nobody tells is better. The human edge did not survive at the chessboard. It moved to the places where nobody has written down the score, and that is where your job is now.

Centaur Chess Already Told You Where You Fit Next to AI
Craft

Teach It Before You Learn It

Most of us learn in the same order. Study, practice, get good, and someday maybe teach. The research says that order is backwards. People who expect to teach remember more of what they read, and remember it in better order, before they teach anyone. In a year when skills expire in months, the fastest learners pick their student first, and the most patient student ever built is already on your desk.

Teach It Before You Learn It
Craft Mastery

The Human in the Loop Is Not Driving

The agent opens the pull request and a person approves it. Three weeks in, the approver reads the summary and clicks merge. Then one lands wrong, and the postmortem names the one human who decided nothing. Human in the loop was a comfortable answer to a real fear. The question that matters is who owns the turn.

The Human in the Loop Is Not Driving
Forge Craft

Reading About AI Is Not Keeping Up

Two people spend the same hour on AI. One reads the launch post and forwards it. The other gives the model a job and ships something ugly. Six months later the tools have improved six times, and each improvement landed on the builder's pipeline and on the reader's nothing. Consuming is fine. Consuming without building is how you fall behind on a monthly schedule.

Reading About AI Is Not Keeping Up
Mastery Craft

Should You Still Learn to Code? Wrong Question.

Someone asked on X whether learning to code from scratch is still worth it, and the replies split into the fundamentals camp and the AI-does-it camp. Both are answering a question that stopped meaning anything. Nobody ever got good at software by acquiring the knowledge first and building second. Aristotle said we become builders by building, and the model dropped the cost of the first build to an afternoon. What is left to bring is curiosity, and enough understanding of what is possible to direct the work.

Should You Still Learn to Code? Wrong Question.
Craft Excellence

Start With the Model. Harness What You Cannot Afford to Guess.

Every team is arguing model versus code one ticket at a time, and most of them are arguing the wrong thing. Start with the model. Let it run in a loop until the check passes. Then build the environment it works in, and write down the few actions it cannot take on its own. That is the harness, and its length is set by risk, not by how much the vendor charges.

Start With the Model. Harness What You Cannot Afford to Guess.
Craft Excellence

Your AI Didn't Break the Process. You Never Had One.

A head of engineering wired an agent into on-call triage and blamed the model for the mess. The agent had followed the runbook to the letter. The humans had been running a different process for two years.

Your AI Didn't Break the Process. You Never Had One.
Craft Excellence

The Skill List Died. Data Access Is the Job.

Reciting internals used to count as senior work. A model pointed at a machine you can actually reach ends that list. The constraint is whether the data exists and whether you are allowed to see it.

The Skill List Died. Data Access Is the Job.
Craft Excellence

Agents Made Every Interrupt Feel Free

A customer Slack used to get parked. Now it becomes a branch before lunch because starting looks free. Generation hid the bill. The rest still lands.

Agents Made Every Interrupt Feel Free
Craft Excellence

Code Got Cheap. Building Did Not.

A ticket used to be the whole job: receive the ask, type the code, argue that you matched it. Cheap code ends that identity before lunch. What remains is deciding whether the thing should exist.

Code Got Cheap. Building Did Not.
Excellence Leadership

The AI First Manifesto: Principles Over Process

Working with organizations on AI adoption feels like deja vu. The same resistance patterns I saw during the waterfall-to-agile transformation. What made agile successful wasn't better processes, it was establishing clear values. AI transformation needs the same thing.

The AI First Manifesto: Principles Over Process
Mastery Forge

The Architecture of Human AI Collaboration

Most leaders add AI tools to human workflows. The breakthrough is designing collaboration architecture where human judgment and AI capability compound each other from the ground up.

The Architecture of Human AI Collaboration
Mastery Excellence

AI First: The Identity Revolution

The real AI revolution isn't about the technology. It's about who you become when you stop fighting it and start forging yourself in its fire.

AI First: The Identity Revolution
Mastery Excellence

The Information Architecture: Curating Input for Greatness

Most people consume information like they eat at a buffet, grabbing everything that looks appealing without considering nutrition or purpose. Then they wonder why their thinking is sluggish and their decisions are poor. Greatness requires intentional information architecture.

The Information Architecture: Curating Input for Greatness
Leadership Excellence

Building AI-First Teams: The Leadership Transformation

The future belongs to leaders who can build teams that don't just use AI tools, but think AI-first. This requires a fundamental transformation in how we hire, develop, and structure technical teams.

Building AI-First Teams: The Leadership Transformation
Mastery Leadership

AI Fluency: The New Technical Literacy

Just as literacy transformed society, AI fluency is becoming the fundamental skill that separates those who thrive from those who struggle in the modern workplace. It's not about coding, it's about thinking.

AI Fluency: The New Technical Literacy
Forge Excellence

The FSD Paradox: Why We Resist the Future We Actually Want

I'm a motorsports enthusiast who loves manual transmissions. So why do I hate driving rental cars now? The rental car experience taught me something uncomfortable about human nature, and why we resist the very technologies that would improve our lives.

The FSD Paradox: Why We Resist the Future We Actually Want
Mastery Excellence

Why Clean Test Output Matters: A Developer's Guide to Noise-Free Testing

Clean test output isn't just about aesthetics, it's about developer productivity, debugging efficiency, and maintaining code quality. When your test suite runs quietly and only speaks up when something's wrong, you can focus on what matters: building great software.

Why Clean Test Output Matters: A Developer's Guide to Noise-Free Testing
Leadership Excellence

Micromanaging AI Is a Terrible Strategy

AI isn't a code monkey. Treat it like a thinking partner, not a servant. Here's how to navigate AI-assisted development without micromanaging.

Micromanaging AI Is a Terrible Strategy
Mastery Leadership

AI-Native Development: The Next Evolution is Here

AI isn't coming. It's here. The teams that master AI-native development now will define the future of product delivery. Learn how to navigate this shift and accelerate your team.

AI-Native Development: The Next Evolution is Here
Mastery Excellence

Private Class Methods in Ruby

Dive into the world of private class methods in Ruby. Understand their purpose, implementation, and when they're the right choice for your code.

Private Class Methods in Ruby
Mastery Excellence

When to Use Concerns vs Service Objects in Rails

Struggling to decide between concerns and service objects in Rails? This guide dives into the pros and cons of each approach, helping you choose the right tool for clean, scalable, and testable code.

When to Use Concerns vs Service Objects in Rails
Excellence Mastery

ChatGPT vs Human Tutors: The Future of Learning

Discover how ChatGPT is changing the landscape of education and tutoring, while understanding the unique value that human tutors bring to the learning experience.

ChatGPT vs Human Tutors: The Future of Learning
Mastery Leadership

Three Aspects of Product Management You Need to Master

Product managers need to be proficient in three key areas: technical skills, data analysis, and empathy for customers. Neglecting any one of these areas can lead to difficulties in successfully managing a product. However, a well-rounded product manager who excels in all three areas can drive success by delivering innovative products that meet customer needs, are technically sound, and supported by data-driven decision-making.

Three Aspects of Product Management You Need to Master
Excellence

Syncing Work and Personal Calendars

Discover practical solutions for maintaining a balanced schedule by effectively syncing your work and personal calendars.

Syncing Work and Personal Calendars
Excellence Leadership

Live versus Recorded Demos

Explore the advantages and challenges of both live and recorded product demos, and learn when to use each approach effectively.

Live versus Recorded Demos
Leadership Excellence

Shirky's Sharing Model : Personal, Communal, Public and Civic

Clay Shirky enlightens us in Cognitive Surplus that, the organization of sharing has many forms and that those forms have varying output values. He gives us a way we can identify four essential points on the spectrum

Shirky's Sharing Model : Personal, Communal, Public and Civic
Excellence Leadership

Ruby Revolution Rebuttal

In a blog post, Mark Turner has responded to the claim that Ruby is just a bunch of tools by stating that it is actually about making developers happy. I believe that the Ruby community is too focused on creating tools and lacks creativity and true innovation. Regional Ruby events have become more about showcasing tools and less about sharing cutting-edge ideas.

Ruby Revolution Rebuttal
Leadership Excellence

Ruby is Just a Bunch of Tools

I have always liked Unix because of it's mentality that lots of small tools chained together could be more than an opaque larger tool. In this instance. I mean Rubyists are a bunch of Tools not of the useful kind. Maybe Zed is right an Rails is a Ghetto.

Ruby is Just a Bunch of Tools
Forge Excellence

The Effects of Shifting or Resetting on Society

If you are listening. A lot of people are talking about a "new norm", a "reset" or a "shift". Largely this discussion is around economics and growing concerns of debt. In reality it is about a lot more than that.

The Effects of Shifting or Resetting on Society
Leadership Excellence

It's About People. Companies Saying Right Wage. Wrong Skill Set.

Why do we keep doing 1950 economic development? Capital first, then innovation and then people. Yet, companies wanting to be here say that it's lack of skilled people that keeps them out. What are we doing to invest in people? Keep and attract the best and brightest?

It's About People. Companies Saying Right Wage. Wrong Skill Set.
Mastery Leadership

Desert Code Camp 2011.1

Desert Code Camp has opened it's call for suggestions. This is a great FREE event that brings together technologists of all kinds together at a single location to learn (while feeding them breakfast and lunch) new technologies, improve on existing technology or share your favorite technology. There has been a good dynamic languages track in addition to a strong Microsoft track. There has been a track for kids (Gangplank Jr) and even sessions on sales or running a business.

Desert Code Camp 2011.1
Excellence

Microsoft Kinect Exceeding Expectations. Adopted More Quickly Than iPad.

I see a lot of new technology. Not very often am I impressed. Microsoft has a winner on their hands with Kinect. I completely ignored it at launch. Gangplank even had Kinect setup at the Chandler Block Party with tons of kids playing it. It looked stupid to me. The Wii had already won my heart.

Microsoft Kinect Exceeding Expectations. Adopted More Quickly Than iPad.