I deleted most of agent skills I'd installed and my coding agent's output didn't change. That sent me digging through the popular skills repos on GitHub.
Thousands of skills published in a few months, most of them instructions an LLM could have written itself. That knowledge is already in the model, and loading it back in is a no-op.
It's a land grab. Here's the test for spotting useless skills, and what to write instead:
Some browsers check what site you're on and render the page differently. Yup, you read that right.
TikTok gets special treatment. So does Netflix. Instagram. Even SeatGuru.
Safari and Firefox both do this. Chrome doesn't. There's a reason for that... Read on.
Designers have complained for decades that engineers ship the wrong thing. The fix isn't better handoffs or AI tools; it's design-minded engineering.
Wrote up what that means, why it matters more in the AI era, and the framework I've used across AKQA, Volvo, and Canva:
https://denodell.com/blog/the-design-minded-engineer?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=design_minded_engineer_post
The first reviews of my new book on software performance engineering are coming in:
⭐ "A manifesto against enshittification."
⭐ "The most principled engineering book I've read in a long time."
⭐ "The best chapters in this book are worth a whole book."
And it's now 50% off with code “MLOdell” until 26 March: https://hubs.la/Q044cvlc0
You can prevent most software performance problems if you recognize their predictable patterns. Performance Engineering in Practice introduces author Den Odell’s Fast by Default model that replaces the slow fix-it-later path with a unique framework to build in performance from the start. Den Odell’s System Paths framework provides a universal diagnostic language for performance that works across any platform or stack to keep your systems fast even as your codebase, team, and user base grow. You’ll work through hands-on examples like slow internal dashboards and cascading problems from a degraded API. Effective profiling tools, shared dashboards, CI budgets, and design reviews all ensure your performance goals are user-centered and your team is aligned and accountable.
I'm excited to share that my new book, Performance Engineering in Practice, is now available through Manning's Early Access Program! 🎉
For 25 years I've seen the same pattern: performance problems surface after users complain, teams panic, patch, and repeat. I call it the Performance Decay Cycle.
This book is the practical guide to breaking that cycle. First 5 chapters available now with 50% off at launch 🚀
https://hubs.la/Q044cvlc0
The first Mac OS fitted in a 64kB ROM. That hard limit didn't hold back innovation, it demanded it.
The engineers who worked within those limits knew their platform completely. We've lost some of that thinking, the knowledge of our foundations.
I wrote more here:
https://denodell.com/blog/constraints-and-the-lost-art-of-optimization?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=constraints_post
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a respectful web engineer.
When someone visits a site, the browser gives us one main thread to run our JavaScript and respond to their interactions.
If our code runs too long, the browser stops listening to them. That’s what jank really is.
We’re only borrowing the main thread from the user. We should treat it with respect.
