Notes on software, science, and the people in between.
Who absorbs the ambiguity in research software work, who gets the room to explore, and why a team needs a deliberate way for the two to change each other.
A plain-English walkthrough of the git/GitHub workflow loop and the fundamentals of how a basic web app works.
Research software projects keep succeeding by accident. A look at where the standard project lifecycle breaks down, and what a version built for research might look like.
What got faster, what got more exhausting, and what it means for research software engineering when prototyping gets cheap.
What seniority actually is, what it makes you responsible for, and why AI makes the difference between earned and assigned authority harder to fake and more important to get right.
Four letters written over a year to a middle schooler paired with me through a science mentorship program, on ocean turbulence, failing an exam twice, and a disaster-recovery workshop that didn't go as planned.
A somewhat accidental path from atmospheric science to research software engineering, and what it taught me about the job.
Practical rules for conferences, from picking one and reading the call for submissions to cutting slides, working a poster, and remembering your charger.
Notes I keep while learning things.
These essays are written with the help of a large language model. The ideas, opinions, arguments, and experiences are mine. The model works as a drafting and editing partner: pushing back on weak reasoning, suggesting a better ordering, and tightening sentences I have rewritten too many times to see clearly. Every line published here is one I have read, revised where needed, and chosen to keep.
Reading times are estimated from the word count of each essay at roughly 225 words per minute.