Ben Link

Ben Link @linkbenjamin

About: Developers on the 🧠 | DevEx Advocate, Human Router, Digital Browncoat | Chaotic Good | Here because tech sparks joy! Ex: Twilio

Location:
Columbia, South Carolina
Joined:
May 9, 2022

Ben Link
articles - 70 total

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...

Learn More 0 0Jun 26

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...

Learn More 2 0Jun 19

The Cultural Compartmentalization Paradox

Ever been part of a "Cultural Initiative"? It goes something like this: Step Details An...

Learn More 15 4Jun 12

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...

Learn More 0 2Jun 5

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...

Learn More 10 2May 29

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...

Learn More 44 14May 22

Organizational Immunosuppressants

Seven years ago, my best friend had a stroke. He had been born with a heart defect, it had been...

Learn More 12 2May 15

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...

Learn More 0 0May 8

The Adventures of Blink S3e9: GitOps

Hey friends, and welcome back to The Adventures of Blink! Before we dig into today's adventure, if...

Learn More 0 0May 1

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...

Learn More 0 0Apr 24

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...

Learn More 0 0Apr 17

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...

Learn More 0 0Apr 10

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...

Learn More 0 0Apr 3

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...

Learn More 0 0Mar 27

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...

Learn More 0 0Mar 20

The Adventures of Blink S3e2: Gitting, Started

Hey, friends! Welcome to The Adventures of Blink! Today we start to dig into some fundamentals of...

Learn More 0 0Mar 13

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...

Learn More 7 0Mar 6

The Danger of a Complexity Fetish

Story Time Let me tell you a story about a project I worked on: We were implementing...

Learn More 6 0Feb 6

10x0 = 0

Before we dig into today's topic: I'm SO GLAD you've joined me here today. If you enjoy this...

Learn More 0 0Jan 23

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...

Learn More 1 0Jan 9

A Year of Adventuring: 2024 in Review

This is a submission for the 2025 New Year Writing challenge: Retro’ing and Debugging 2024. Hey...

Learn More 23 1Jan 2

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! ...

Learn More 5 2Dec 26 '24

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...

Learn More 1 0Dec 12 '24

Fix Your Foundation: Developer Experience

If you enjoy this brief look at DevEx, please make sure to click follow so you don't miss any future...

Learn More 1 0Dec 6 '24

The Adventures of Blink: Advent of Code 2024

Hey pals! I decided to participate in the Advent of Code this year. If you're not familiar, it's a...

Learn More 0 0Dec 2 '24

The Adventures of Blink S2e10: Artificially Intelligent Hangman (Season Finale!)

Hey friends! Welcome to the Season Finale of The Adventures of Blink! Season 2 ends with today's...

Learn More 0 0Nov 14 '24

The Adventures of Blink S2e9: Gathering Metrics with Prometheus and Grafana

Hey friends, and welcome to the next Adventure of Blink! If you've been following along, we've done...

Learn More 0 0Nov 7 '24

The Adventures of Blink S2e8: Fast-Forward to a Working Game (with Snyk Integration!)

TL/DR: Youtube So why are we fast-forwarding, Blink??? The goal for season...

Learn More 1 0Oct 31 '24

The Adventures of Blink S2e7: A GUI Screen in Python

Hey pals! Welcome to another Adventure of Blink! We're continuing our Season 2 build of Hangman...

Learn More 0 0Oct 24 '24

The Adventures of Blink S2e6: Integrating All the Things

Hey and welcome back to The Adventures of Blink! We're continuing Season 2 today, building Hangman...

Learn More 0 0Oct 17 '24