When to skip the abstraction

I write smaller commits than I used to. The commits are uglier in isolation and much easier to read in sequence.

Latency budgets work better than latency targets. Targets are aspirational. Budgets force you to delete features when you go over.

I used to add a layer of abstraction the first time I saw a pattern repeat. Now I wait for the third. The waiting is uncomfortable, but the abstractions that survive that wait tend to last.

The team I learned the most from didn't have great tools. They had a great habit of reading each other's pull requests in full, including the parts that weren't theirs.

If a config file has more than a dozen options, half of them aren't being used. The other half are being used in ways the original author didn't predict.