API and AI coach. Author of "Principles of Web API Design" (Addison Wesley). Instructor. Coach. Consultant. Enterprise architecture

Colorado, USA
Joined May 2009
James Higginbotham retweeted
Amazon pitching the reasons for why they cancelled the new Stargate show
When Victor Wembanyama threw the 1st pitch in New York 👀
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OTD in 1980: Trans American Flight 209, a B-707, lands safely in Chicago (US) after crew was incapacitated by food poisoning. An ex-fighter pilot traveling as a passenger, along with a flight attendant, took control, supported by an ATC specialist and a former USAF captain.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Replying to @dtk4723 @jennywen
yep a year of prototyping before shipping in 10 days
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James Higginbotham retweeted
We software developers habitually use CRUD and collection terminology in our designs/code. It's a knee-jerk decision because our programming facilities—frameworks and libraries—are chock-full of them and we want to go fast. Our brains become wired to that "language" and we start to think that every abstraction is just a variable, container, or disk/database. Pro Tip: Challenge yourself and your team to reject CRUD and collection terminology and seek out more fitting words directly from the business.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Henry Ford thanking the horses
I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
claude, fire 40% of my employees. don’t use any capital letters.
we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack
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James Higginbotham retweeted
apparently software as we know it is dead because Susan from accounting is going to vibe code a calendly alternative while on her lunch break I think some of you need to go outside and speak to real people
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Mike Brady bought their house with the money he made from inventing Zoom.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
☕ 30 years ago today, Java 1.0 was released. What a wonderful journey it's been since I started learning it in the autumn of 2002. 🥳 Happy birthday, Java!
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Making devs finally write docs by calling them “skills” is a great arb
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James Higginbotham retweeted
“paula”
@paularamblesJan 13
he hates ai? oh he’s claudestrophobic
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Wishing @martingero, @bradtravelers, @BaronDestructo & the team a productive time in the #Stargate writers’ room, filled with great creative ideas! So excited to see what comes out of it! 🤩 Until then, we look forward to your updates, Joe. #StargateReturns ❤️
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James Higginbotham retweeted
The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Microservices are not a technical decision. They're an organizational one. If you have: - 5 developers - 1 product - Shared codebase ownership - Daily standups where everyone knows everything You don't need microservices. You need focus. Microservices solve organizational problems, not performance problems. Stop using Netflix's playbook when you're not Netflix's size. Your monolith isn't the problem. Your process is.
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Everyone is either offended or excited about “vibe coding.” It’s all the rage and going to solve all your problems, or it’s the next great evil spewing crap code all over your systems. Those of us who love well structured clean code which is modular and concise seem to be a dying breed. For someone who’s early career was shaped by McConnell’s Code Complete, Brooks’ The Mythical Man Month, and Fowler’s Refactoring, this feels.. odd. Is "vibe coding" a threat? Depends on how you define your problem. Link following..
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James Higginbotham retweeted
Feels like just yesterday😫🤣😂
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Microservices created more jobs than they solved problems. Most teams would ship faster with a well-structured monolith.
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