Blogging - Dean Is

Wrestling with LLMs: The Staging Lights

2/24/2026

I've been asking LLMs to write tests first for months. Simon Willison's new guide explains why it works — and lends credence to what test-driven development has always practiced.

Three Dokku Plugins That Built Each Other

2/18/2026

I started building a backup tool and accidentally built an infrastructure-as-code engine. Then a test harness turned into an app store. Three plugins that weren't planned together ended up needing each other.

dokku-sso: Testing Against Real Apps

2/8/2026

Three Dokku plugins taught me that your tests are only as good as your test framework. BATS kept me testing internals. Playwright let me test outcomes.

Ember Data Part 3: Doing It Ourselves

2/7/2026

The Ember Data team promised migration assistance for model-fragments. It never came. So I did it myself.

eslint-plugin-typed-jsdoc: or if type errors were lint errors

2/3/2026

I wanted TypeScript's benefits without changing languages. After 4 days building a type inference system, I realized I could just use tsc and ESLint. The working version took 3 hours.

Run a Mail Server (No, Not Like That)

1/21/2026

Everyone says don't run your own mail. They're right, but they're also missing the point. There's a middle path.

Ember Data 3.x and Beyond: Going Off The Rails (Part 2)

1/15/2026

Corporate pivots, broken promises, and the slow abandonment of the community that made Ember Data successful.

Ember Data Origins: Drafting on Rails (Part 1)

1/14/2026

The early promise of Ember Data's Rails integration, the JSON:API pivot, and the emergence of community extensions that would later become casualties.

Starting a Frontend Guild: Making Enjoyable Meetings

1/7/2026

I started a frontend guild at my current employer. Not to teach, but to listen. One hour a month, three parts - one for update, two for others. That two-to-one ratio led to a 10x reduction in API traffic and made meetings people actually wanted to attend.

How RFCs Outlived My Employer

12/29/2025

From implementing internet RFCs across healthcare apps to writing internal RFCs at Hashicorp - a deep dive into why a 50-year-old process remains the gold standard for making durable, high-quality decisions in distributed engineering organizations.

Wrestling with LLMs: The Parachute on the Dragster

12/22/2025

LLMs gave me a dragster engine. But going 10x without tests, CI/CD, or proper deployment is a crash waiting to happen. The twist: LLMs help build the parachute too.

Wrestling with LLMs: The Developer's New Hats

12/15/2025

After Phase 26 revealed catastrophic bugs Claude missed, I realized working with LLMs requires a fundamental role shift. I'm wearing different hats as PM and QA engineer, and handing my dev hat to the machine.

Wrestling with LLMs: Zen and the Art of Vibe Coding

12/12/2025

LLMs will confidently give wrong answers and repeat mistakes. Your natural response - sarcasm, frustration, blame - makes them worse. Zen practices offer a framework for staying calm and getting better outputs. Your vibe becomes the model's vibe.

Wrestling with LLMs: Managing Smarmy, Overconfident LLMs

12/9/2025

Claude told me dokku-dns was "production ready" and "enterprise grade" after 6 weeks. Then real world testing revealed everything was broken - some of it catastrophically so.

dokku-dns: Automated DNS Management for Self-Hosted Apps

12/4/2025

How dokku-dns eliminates manual DNS work through triggers and zones, making DNS management invisible.

My Dokku Homelab: Open Source Apps That Power My Digital Life

12/2/2025

A tour of the open source applications I self-host on Dokku, from photo management to home automation.

Why Dokku: The Power of PaaS Simplicity for the Busy Developer

12/1/2025

Dokku provides an elegant layer atop Docker for self-hosting, enabling professional-grade deployments without operational complexity.

What I’ve Liked About Trying Svelte as an Ember Dev

11/17/2025

A reflection on transitioning from Ember.js to SvelteKit, highlighting familiar patterns and key improvements.

Essential Development Tips for Robust and Maintainable Code

9/20/2016

A collection of battle-tested advice for writing cleaner, more resilient, and understandable code, drawing from years of professional experience.

Understanding Basic and Advanced Data Types in Programming

9/20/2016

A comprehensive guide to the fundamental and common advanced building blocks of information storage in computer programming.

Dean is Blogging