Ben Link articles - 95 total
Why "Are you busy?" Is The Wrong Question
Hey Friends! This will be my last post of 2025 - I'm taking the next two weeks off to enjoy the...
The Cargo Cult
Hey friends! You ever notice how people sometimes copy the shape of a good practice without...
From Sausage to Omelette
Nobody really wants to see how sausage is made, do they? The process is messy, unglamorous, and...
Advent of Code 2025 is Here!
Hey fellow adventurers! Every year on adventofcode.com, you can sharpen your coding skills with some...
5 Quick DevEx Audit Wins
Hey friends! Last summer, we walked through the big picture of The DevEx Audit—a full-scale look at...
Do You Even Belong in Tech Anymore?
Imagine being wheeled into surgery and discovering that your surgeon hasn’t actually held a scalpel...
The Adventures of Blink S4e10: Blink vs the Gilded Rose: The Rose in Review
Hey friends! It's here - we finish off Season 4 today! I'd like to take a moment to express my...
The Adventures of Blink S4e9: The Gilded Rose: The DevEx Patch
Hey friends! So... we built some unit tests to act as guardrails. And we refactored the heck out...
The Adventures of Blink S4e8: Blink vs. The Gilded Rose: The Refactor Gambit
Hey friends! Last week's test suite work has set us up to start fixing code this week. Since we...
The Adventures of Blink S4e7: The Gilded Rose: The Test Vault
Last week we got ourselves hired on at the Gilded Rose, and we found that there's a ton of cleanup...
The Adventures of Blink S4e6: Blink vs. The Gilded Rose: Briefing
Hey friends! Welcome to our mid-season pivot: The Gilded Rose. Lauded by many, Feared by some... a...
The Adventures of Blink S4e5: Blink vs. The Vibe Commit
Hey there! Good to see you! Last week we worked on fixing a Phantom Dependency... this week we're...
The Adventures of Blink S4e4: Blink vs The Phantom Dependency
Greetings fellow Adventurers! The DevEx mission of Season 4 continues... Last week we looked at a...
The Adventures of Blink S4e3: Blink vs The Broken Test Runner
Hey friends! Last week we shored up the Setup Script for our application - we showed what "quick...
The Adventures of Blink S4e2: Blink vs. The Setup Script
Last week we addressed the README - we learned that it's not enough to just dump a bunch of words on...
The Adventures of Blink S4e1: Blink vs. The README
Hey friends! Trying something new this season: Blog posts for the episodes won't be quite as...
Less Dogma, More Rigor
AS A REWARD FOR READING TODAY'S POST, I'VE INCLUDED A LITTLE SURPRISE AT THE BOTTOM. Thank you for...
Conference Chatter: What, You Too?
Hey friend! Have you subscribed to The Adventures of Blink? I'd love to have you join me on the...
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...