I rarely worry about constructors or initialization in F#. But, every once in a while, the difference is important.

In short, I’ve been using F# for several years now and didn’t realize that F# record types can’t be inherited. I think this demonstrates that inheritance for data types is unnecessary when actions and data are separated, and it may hint at a larger trend in programming languages.

This post recounts my journey to understand tests data arrangement from before my blogging days. This exploration cemented key lessons in reusability and composition.

Sports generally have some fundamental skills that athletes drill endlessly. These fundamentals are the foundation for good execution. They must be committed to muscle memory if the athlete wants to focus on higher-level skills and strategy. In fencing, footwork is fundamental. What is the equivalent for software?

I noticed Scala has several testing libraries that tout functionally pure tests. Is purity desirable for developer tests?

I heard Go had late-bound inheritance and was excited to see how that would effect my coding. Instead I found that I already achieve the same kind of value in F#, just in a different way.

Of all things, a sci-fi novel recently got me thinking about the importance of notation and how it influences our thinking. In short, syntax length impacts the kinds and sophistication of ideas.

Validating that data fits certain constraints is a prevelant programming task and how we approach it effects the system’s safety and reliability. Many approaches have been devised, and I recently realized the key difference between two major approaches: Design-by-Contract and Type-Driven Development.

I was asked what percentage of time I spend on system design (or architecture) over coding. The question didn’t make sense to me, and I think I’ve articulated why. I see architecture as a facilitated aspect of implementation rather than a separable process.

I never realized how sloppy my use of observability terminology was until I read the OpenTelemetry documentation.