Featured on Michael Bromley

AI Made Me Write This

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100

I have been inspired to write again by AI. By bad AI writing, to be exact. You know the sort. I don’t even need to elaborate at this stage.

I’m by no means anti-AI. I use it constantly at work. It has transformed what I am capable of getting done as a software developer. I’m not anti-AI; I am pro-human.

I like people and I’m interested in their ideas. For that reason I really hate AI writing. I hate to read an article or social media post and be left with no idea about whether the author actually shared an idea of their own. Maybe the article did start with their own idea which they fed to the AI to “make it sound good”. But on the other hand maybe they just prompted the AI to “write me a blog post about something that will get engagement”. I have no idea either way.

High Modernism & Software Design

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Brasília was envisaged as the dawn of a new Brazil. Purpose-built from the ground up on a pristine site in just 41 months, it attempted to remould and redefine what it meant to be Brazilian in its own logical, elegant, efficient image.

Brasília by Ramon Buçard on Unsplash

This style of large-scale urban planning is labeled high modernism by James C. Scott in his book Seeing Like A State. The same ethos and aesthetic can also be seen in the city of Chandigarh in India, which was designed by the modernist architect Le Corbusier.

What Might Happen If You Share It

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 13:00:00 +0000

I grew up in the Winamp days. Napster, Limewire, cracks & warez, remember? Winamp was always open. And alongside my playlist of illicitly-downloaded mp3s would always be MilkDrop. If you don’t know, MilkDrop is absolute zenith of audio visualization software, and it spawned my love of generative visualizations.

I’ve never got my head around all the maths involved. I’ve dabbled with shaders, but it still boggles my mind. Nevertheless, I would spend my evenings playing with the HTML Canvas and WebAudio APIs, exploring and building things just for fun. Programming can be really fun.

But What About the Bus Factor?

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 08:00:59 +0100

The term “bus factor” refers to the number of project maintainers who, if hit by a bus and incapacitated, would cause that project to stall. You can replace the bus crash with any other form of physical or mental incapacitation or even changes in life circumstances or priorities. The lower the bus factor, the greater the risk that a project might suddenly become unsustainable.

Credit: Romain Chollet via Unsplash

This is a topic close to my heart. As the maintainer of the open-source e-commerce framework Vendure, I am living with a bus factor of one. I work full-time on Vendure, and I’m hoping to indie-hack my way to sustainability. To get there, lots of companies need to be willing to adopt it. I’m pretty sure that the bus factor plays a role in their decision.

On Working Alone

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 08:00:59 +0100

Earlier this year I quit my job to work full-time on an open source ecommerce framework. After three years working as the lead of a small team within a department of around 20 devs, I’m now back to working alone. Here are some reflections on the thrills and perils of the lone developer.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Communication & Efficiency

The problems of development teams are essentially problems of communication. Email, Slack, stand-ups, Jira, meetings. All serve their purpose and all have their downsides - as documented in approximately 50,000 think-pieces over on Medium. Managers, processes and methodologies all exist - at least in part - to solve the problems of team communication.

The Covert Opt-In

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:52:59 +0200

About 13 years ago I built a web shop for my dad’s company. Like many small businesses, the company does not have an in-house development or IT department, so anything vaguely website-related tends to end up in my inbox. This is how I recently found myself in a conference call with Dom from IntegriMart¹, a company which provides marketing tools for websites. This type of business is known as a “marketing tech” company, sometimes abbreviated to the crap-sounding “martech”, and a close cousin to “adtech”.

Why I Haven’t Fixed Your Issue Yet

Fri, 13 May 2016 14:22:02 +0000

Hi there. You opened an issue with my project on GitHub, and it’s getting kind of stale by now.

I am aware of it - GitHub was kind enough to send me an email containing your report, which I scanned one morning a couple of weeks ago while I ate breakfast. I’ve even thought about it briefly a couple of times since then; once I was in the shower and I got the vague idea that I knew what caused it - but I wasn’t sure because I could not recall the specifics.

The Republic of Virtue: Terror, Tolerance and the Internet

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 04:58:22 +0000

I’ve recently been listening to the excellent podcast series Revolutions by Mike Duncan. Right now we are in the thick of the French Revolution. It’s really riveting stuff, and offers some fascinating insights into the interplay of groups, ideology, virtue, violence and terror. If that list sounds familiar, perhaps you frequent Twitter or Reddit or some other online community.

Detail from a painting of the execution of Robespierre

Ah, the Internet - the defining technology of the new Information Age. An amplifier of everything good, bad, and downright weird about humanity. From the comfort of our sofa, bed or even toilet (come on, admit it…), we can enjoy the spectacle of human interacting with human.

Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 18:14:52 +0000

I am an intermediate programmer.

I have a pretty good grasp of the basics. I have made enough mistakes to have a good idea why they were mistakes. I am aware that there is a lot that I need to know more about. Crucially, I have some idea of what those things are, and I am actively and energetically working on improving.

It has taken a while for me to get to the point where I am confident enough to admit that I am only average in ability. I no longer feel the need to hold second-hand opinions that I don’t really understand. I’m not so afraid of being found out when I don’t know about something.