Physical Buttons Are Still Better Than Touch Controls
Touch controls look clean in product photos, but physical buttons remain faster, clearer, and easier to trust.
Engineering notes from the sharp end
Practical writing about software, systems, delivery, and things that behave strangely under pressure.
wade womersley – york based software engineer I write the way I work: direct, useful, and more interested in what holds up in production than what sounds clever on a slide.
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Software Engineer
Coding agents work better when the prompt defines observable completion instead of only describing the code change.
Food, Random Stuff
Pick and mix is expensive, badly balanced, and still more fun than buying a sensible bag of sweets.
AI
Codex plugins package tools, instructions, and repeatable workflows, which is more useful than another generic AI interface.
Software Engineer
Microsoft’s Binlog Analyzer grounds AI answers in real build evidence and verifies fixes with before-and-after logs.
Programming
The official MCP C# SDK 2.0 adopts stateless HTTP while keeping older clients and servers working during migration.
Random Stuff
The floppy-disk save icon has outlived the object it depicts and become a tiny piece of computer archaeology.
Programming
Node.js 26 enables Temporal by default, giving new JavaScript code a better starting point than the old Date object.
Programming
Android 17 improves MessageQueue performance, but apps reflecting into private internals need testing before targeting SDK 37.
Programming
Android 17’s adaptive-first direction makes large-screen behaviour a normal release requirement rather than optional polish.