As perks of the job, I tend to find myself having to maintain old code bases with many outdated dependencies. That is quite usual, but turns to be specially painful when you need to update a core dependency and every other thing starts breaking due to API changes. This has happened to me in 2 workplaces, first in Ruby on Rails, and latest in the infrastructure scripts written in Python 2.

Read more...

I have seen a rise in the number of opinionated tools present in the common mindspace in the last decade. These tools usually cause controversy by limiting user choice and following a set path through problem space. But why have they become popular? Why are they “better”?

Read more...