Ben Link articles - 77 total
What We Talk About When We Talk About Refactoring
A few years ago, I worked with a developer who took a kind of minimalist pride in his code....
How to Build Trust with Engineers (A Guide for Execs)
The Problem Beneath the Problems If you’ve been following along with recent posts, you may...
The Cost of Carrying Broken Things
Somewhere in your organization right now, one of your developers is screen-sharing their terminal to...
If it Ain’t Broke… Fix it Until it is
Every day I'm shufflin' ♠️♥️♣️♦️ On my 10th anniversary with a previous employer, I...
From Scripts to Strategy — Let Devs Lead the Way
A few weeks ago, we had a conversation about Shadow I.T. and about how it's actually a sign of gaps...
The DevEx Audit
News flash: I have a tendency to be abstract. I like to think about things. Then think about...
I'm "Remote", Not "Disengaged"
When trust is broken, the office won’t fix it. It finally happened. In a big Corporate...
Shut up, Meg: Why Devs Don't Speak Up, and What it Costs
I stood in front of a room full of leaders and told the truth: our developer experience was broken. I...
Burnout and the Value of Patience
Hi. I'm Blink — you probably know that already. Hard to end up in The Adventures of Blink without...
The Cultural Compartmentalization Paradox
Ever been part of a "Cultural Initiative"? It goes something like this: Step Details An...
The First Rule of Shadow Tooling
Long ago, I was a new(ish) IT Professional working on an Application Support Team. It was old-school...
Your PLATFORM Is NOT the Main Character
It's a tale as old as technology itself... A bunch of people were hired to build a system. So we...
Trust is the New Pizza Party
When I was a kid in school, the Pizza Party was the Pinnacle of Achievement for the class. If we...
Organizational Immunosuppressants
Seven years ago, my best friend had a stroke. He had been born with a heart defect, it had been...
The Adventures of Blink S3e10: Vibe Coding, Right or Wrong?
Hey friends, welcome to The Adventures of Blink! Before we dive in, a quick reminder: If you get...
The Adventures of Blink S3e9: GitOps
Hey friends, and welcome back to The Adventures of Blink! Before we dig into today's adventure, if...
The Adventures of Blink S3e8: Intro to GitLab CI/CD
Hey friends, and welcome back to the Adventures of Blink! Today's adventure is closely related to...
The Adventures of Blink S3e7: Automation with GitHub Actions
Hey everyone! Blink here, back for another adventure! You can always find me over on GitHub. Before...
The Adventures of Blink S3e6: Git Beyond the Code
Hey friends, and welcome to this week's Adventure of Blink! I'm so glad you're here, be sure to...
The Adventures of Blink S3e5: Use the Forks
Hey friends, welcome to The Adventures of Blink! If you find today's adventure helpful, please let...
The Adventures of Blink S3e4: Setting Up Cloud Collaboration with Git
Hey friends, and welcome back to the Adventures of Blink! If you find this post valuable, please let...
The Adventures of Blink S3e3: Branching into the Git Multiverse
Hey friends, welcome back to the Adventures of Blink! This week's adventure continues our deep-dive...
The Adventures of Blink S3e2: Gitting, Started
Hey, friends! Welcome to The Adventures of Blink! Today we start to dig into some fundamentals of...
The Adventures of Blink S3e1: It's Time To Start Season 3!
Hey Pals! It's finally time to start Season 3! Youtube, for those who don't feel like...
The Danger of a Complexity Fetish
Story Time Let me tell you a story about a project I worked on: We were implementing...
10x0 = 0
Before we dig into today's topic: I'm SO GLAD you've joined me here today. If you enjoy this...
The Mortal Enemy of Done is Perfect
Hey pals, welcome back to the Adventures of Blink! For today's adventure, I want to explore the...
A Year of Adventuring: 2024 in Review
This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024. Hey...
Advent of Code 2024 Retro: What could you do if you didn't care whether you failed?
Wow, so... this post has blown up today. Welcome all you newcomers to the Adventures of Blink! ...
Uncle Owen, This R2 Unit Has a Bad Motivator!
Getting in before the pedants: the droid's name was R5-D4. So he wasn't an R2 unit... but Luke says...