I write about .NET, open source software, the Microsoft ecosystem, my adventures with startups, and outer space.
Latest from Aaronontheweb: Software Falsehoods: you can build it cheap, fast, and good - pick two
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Software Falsehoods: you can build it cheap, fast, and good - pick twoPublished on March 8, 2025 in 10 minutes to read “You can build it cheap, fast, and good - pick two” is how the saying goes, referring to the inherent trade-offs in software development priorities. It makes intuitive sense but utterly fails in real-world applications. Two simple reasons why this correlation does not hold:
Price is its own independent quality determined entirely by the buyer’s and seller’s perception of value. As the Dan Luu article I linked to mentions - it’s fairly difficult even for experts within a given domain to accurately assess the market value of their own services (or someone else’s), hence why price discovery has to be tested continuously1. But let’s take a closer look under the covers at the price vs. quality and price vs. speed relationships. |
Aaronontheweb
I write about .NET, open source software, the Microsoft ecosystem, my adventures with startups, and outer space.
There Has Never Been a Better Time to be a Junior Developer - And It Won't Last Forever Published on August 22, 2025 in 11 minutes to read Everyone in tech is convinced that AI will eliminate junior developers first. “Why hire a junior when AI can write code?” they ask. The prevailing wisdom is that entry-level developers are most vulnerable to automation. They’re dead wrong. I wrote “The Future of AI Belongs to Experienced Operators with Good Taste” a few months back and that’s still...
So Microsoft Deleted Some of Our Packages From NuGet.org Without Notice Published on July 11, 2025 in 7 minutes to read “Software supply chain management” is one of those terms that sounds like Venture Capital-funded vendor marketing bullshit right up until it isn’t. In 2016 the npm left-pad incident taught many of us in the software industry the importance of: The fragility of depending directly on central package management systems, such as npm or nuget.org, hence why artifact proxying...
Continuous Deployment of Docker Compose Applications Using GitHub Actions Published on April 23, 2025 in 12 minutes to read Intro Over the past year or so we’ve built out a decent-sized test lab environment for Akka.NET and I’ve also personally started a small homelab environment for creating some useful services for my family’s use. Both of these networks use the same components: Tailscale for secure networking and ssh access; docker compose for running infrastructure services such as...