Art & Analogue
Cassette Logic
A song about something that never dies but is already dead turned up on a thirty-year-old mixtape this morning. Cassette has a way of delivering what you would never think to ask for.
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Independent essays
Human judgement still matters.
Different Shelf follows apparently sensible ideas through software, player experience and organisations until their real consequences appear.
01 · Featured
Published 8 May 2025
02 · The shelf in evidence
The shape of the argument.
59 essays January 2025 to August 2026
03 · Ways in
Begin with the question you already have.
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What should the product feel like? Browse the current essays
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How much management does the work need? Browse the current essays
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What does the codebase know? Browse the current essays
Machines in the loop without turning engineers into prompt typists. Code assistance, analysis, tests, and tooling that speeds judgement rather than outsourcing it. Practical notes from the shop floor, not demo day.
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Nx Should Make Code Graphs Cacheable
Nx already owns the Project Graph and distributed cache. Should it make finer Code Graph indexes reusable across the organisation?
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The CLI Will Outlive Your MCP Server
MCP is useful packaging, not architecture. Build durable APIs and CLIs first, then generate the adapter if the market still wants one.
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A Monorepo Is a Knowledge Graph
A graph-aware monorepo turns source and build relationships into infrastructure, reducing the time and tokens AI spends rediscovering them.
Shape systems through behaviour and constraints. Cohesion over cleverness, coupling you can name, evolve rather than rewrite, and design systems that scale without turning into bureaucracy. Monorepos, boundaries, and differential builds used with judgement.
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Nx Should Make Code Graphs Cacheable
Nx already owns the Project Graph and distributed cache. Should it make finer Code Graph indexes reusable across the organisation?
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The CLI Will Outlive Your MCP Server
MCP is useful packaging, not architecture. Build durable APIs and CLIs first, then generate the adapter if the market still wants one.
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A Monorepo Is a Knowledge Graph
A graph-aware monorepo turns source and build relationships into infrastructure, reducing the time and tokens AI spends rediscovering them.
Plotters, cassette logic and other friendly constraints. Making physical things to reset taste, so the digital work stops drifting toward beige. Imperfect lines teach more than perfect pixels.
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Monkey Dust and the Pale Blue Room
A fever dream of early-2000s Britain that still haunts its viewers.
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Cassette Logic
A song about something that never dies but is already dead turned up on a thirty-year-old mixtape this morning. Cassette has a way of delivering what you would never think to ask for.
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Algorithmic Plotter Art
An exploratory collection of works created using geometric algorithms of varying complexity.
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Smaller Delivery Units, Wider Management Spans
AI extends the reach of engineering judgement. Product delivery units can become smaller, management spans can become wider, and collective stewardship can remain.
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The Code Is No Longer the Scarce Part
Better models do not remove the need for expertise. They can make bad judgement harder to recognise and give good judgement far more reach.
Short feedback loops and sharp tools. Local envs that boot fast, CI that helps not heckles, trunk based flow, useful reviews, and scripts that stay out of the frame budget. Less ceremony, more shipping, with just enough guardrails to avoid late night archaeology.
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Nx Should Make Code Graphs Cacheable
Nx already owns the Project Graph and distributed cache. Should it make finer Code Graph indexes reusable across the organisation?
-
The CLI Will Outlive Your MCP Server
MCP is useful packaging, not architecture. Build durable APIs and CLIs first, then generate the adapter if the market still wants one.
-
A Monorepo Is a Knowledge Graph
A graph-aware monorepo turns source and build relationships into infrastructure, reducing the time and tokens AI spends rediscovering them.
The invisible forces that bend outcomes. Code review as teaching, email as a signal not a weapon, deep work respected, and a bias to show your working. The code belongs to everyone, and shoes matter because craft lives in details.
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Sweating the Bar and Raising the Details
Management meetings were built for an older information system. Poor writing keeps the machinery alive, and one calendar invitation can commit thousands before anybody acts.
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Your Managers Are Not a Distribution List
Cascading a message through management loses reach, meaning and accountability. Policy owners should publish directly, notify proportionately and put repeated rules into the workflow.
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Smaller Delivery Units, Wider Management Spans
AI extends the reach of engineering judgement. Product delivery units can become smaller, management spans can become wider, and collective stewardship can remain.
Numbers that change behaviour instead of dashboards that change nothing. RUM over folklore, leading and lagging indicators, counter metrics to keep us honest, and the odd case where the app feels faster while the graph says otherwise.
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Watching the Watchers, Part 2: How Scripts Break Your Frame Budget
Why borrowed milliseconds cost more than they seem.
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Show Your Working
Why visible fixes build knowledge, demonstrate competence, and strengthen trust.
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Trading Without a Ticker
Real-user monitoring is our market feed. Hide it, and we trade blind on player experience.
Teams that match the system you want, not the org chart you inherited. Mirrored front end and back end crews, centres of excellence when they earn it, release trains for coordination, and ownership that is clear enough to make escalation boring.
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Sweating the Bar and Raising the Details
Management meetings were built for an older information system. Poor writing keeps the machinery alive, and one calendar invitation can commit thousands before anybody acts.
-
Your Managers Are Not a Distribution List
Cascading a message through management loses reach, meaning and accountability. Policy owners should publish directly, notify proportionately and put repeated rules into the workflow.
-
Smaller Delivery Units, Wider Management Spans
AI extends the reach of engineering judgement. Product delivery units can become smaller, management spans can become wider, and collective stewardship can remain.
Essays to keep the compass straight. Models for thinking about trade offs, time horizons, and the odd decision that looks wrong on a slide but right in production. Less slogan, more sense making.
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A Modern Approach to Engineering
The practices that make companies faster, safer, and engineers more valuable.
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Shaping Architecture Through Behaviour
The chart is not the system. The system is what teams make visible.
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Cassette Logic
A song about something that never dies but is already dead turned up on a thirty-year-old mixtape this morning. Cassette has a way of delivering what you would never think to ask for.
Paved roads that product teams choose on purpose. Golden paths, sensible defaults, release trains, observability that answers questions, and contracts that survive real traffic. Platform as a product, measured by adoption not memos.
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The Other Production
Players only see production. Engineers live in the systems behind it. When those systems fail, the product fails later. The two worlds are closer than they look.
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Keys to the Kingdom
Finding the Keys That Matter
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Beyond Squads: The Case for Centres of Excellence
When muscles and nerves aren’t enough to stand.
How the product feels in the hand, not just what lab graphs say. Frame budgets, jank hunting, offline seams, cold starts, and the small UI choices that decide trust. We look at perceived speed, device constraints, PWA vs native trade offs, and the habits that make real users stick around.
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What It Takes for a Web App to Feel Premium
Building a premium experience on the web is harder than it looks, but it scales everywhere once you get it right. This is what that discipline actually involves.
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The Five Second Contract
Queueing looks harmless at first. A slow call holds a few threads, then a few more, and if left unchecked it can tip the whole system over.
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Let the Browser Do the Heavy Lifting
Most slowdowns in an SPA come from one place. Too much work ends up hanging off a single thin thread inside the browser, and the moment it strains, the whole product feels it.
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Sweating the Bar and Raising the Details
Management meetings were built for an older information system. Poor writing keeps the machinery alive, and one calendar invitation can commit thousands before anybody acts.
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Your Managers Are Not a Distribution List
Cascading a message through management loses reach, meaning and accountability. Policy owners should publish directly, notify proportionately and put repeated rules into the workflow.
04 · Latest
The chronological register.
Nx Should Make Code Graphs Cacheable
6 min Developer ExperienceThe CLI Will Outlive Your MCP Server
6 min AI & Tooling FuturesA Monorepo Is a Knowledge Graph
9 min Architecture & Systems ThinkingSweating the Bar and Raising the Details
5 min Engineering CultureYour Managers Are Not a Distribution List
5 min Engineering CultureSmaller Delivery Units, Wider Management Spans
5 min Organisational DesignThe Code Is No Longer the Scarce Part
7 min Engineering CultureThe Product Development Team Is No Longer the Smallest Unit of Delivery
11 min Organisational Design05 · About the shelf
What happens to good ideas in the real world.
Different Shelf follows apparently sensible ideas through software, player experience and organisations until their real consequences appear.
Evidence matters. So does deciding what it means.