Writings on David Poblador i Garcia

The next GitHub is not worth winning

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:55:33 +0000

On 6 August, GitHub Actions was degraded for nine hours. At peak, 71% of workflow runs failed outright on infrastructure errors, and three quarters of the ones that survived were delayed by more than five minutes. On 11 August, the GraphQL API spent two hours timing out. On 17 August, the whole thing went down worldwide: roughly 20% error rates across the web interface and the API, roughly 50% on archive and raw content downloads, with Actions, Webhooks, Issues, Pull Requests and Copilot all failing together.

Someone named this in 2004

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:02:34 +0000

Last week I built a small app in a couple of hours. Not a prototype, a finished thing that does one job for a handful of people. It cost me an afternoon I would never have spent on it five years ago.

I’ve been calling this shift I2S, Ideas to Software. SaaS was the economics of building one generalized product and renting it to thousands of customers. I2S is the inverse: software generated for one specific need, cheap enough that it never has to pay for itself. We love naming things. A name makes a shift feel like it belongs to us, to right now.

TIL: One escape sequence makes my terminal follow my AI agent into a worktree

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:29:10 +0000

The thing that made me grin today: I tell Claude Code to “work in a git worktree,” the agent jumps into a fresh checkout, and my Ghostty terminal follows it — new tabs and splits open right inside the worktree, not where I launched. The agent moves; the terminal moves with it. Feels like magic, and it’s one escape sequence.

A bit about OSC

Escape sequences aren’t just colors. OSC — Operating System Command — is the family that sends side-channel messages to your terminal: window title, clipboard, and the one here, the current directory (OSC 7):

The favors we used to need

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:26:37 +0000

I ended the last post on a promise. That one was about the day I stopped doubting AI coding agents, and about how much further they let a single experienced engineer reach: things you can now build alone in an afternoon that used to take a team and a month. Then I dodged the obvious next question. If one person’s reach can expand this much, the way teams are built around that person has to change too, and this is the start of that argument. Less about me this time, more about everyone standing next to me, and about the whole apparatus we’ve spent decades building to hold groups of engineers together.

The day I started believing

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:59:05 +0000

I’ve used AI coding assistants since the first day they were genuinely worth using, and not as a curiosity or for the demo. I’ve used them daily, on real work, on systems other people depend on.

For a long time I was fairly sure I knew exactly what they were. They were a very good autocomplete, a tireless junior who never quite reads the style guide, a way to skip the boring parts of the job. Useful, occasionally astonishing, but bounded. I had a tidy mental model of where the ceiling sat, and I was comfortable working inside it.

Despite everything, a small praise of GitHub

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:02:34 +0000

It’s hard to ignore the current mood around GitHub. Something feels off.

As Gergely Orosz has been hinting in recent posts and discussions, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand what the strategy is, or where leadership is taking things. You don’t need insider knowledge to feel it: outages, degraded services, indexing inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities surfacing in uncomfortable clusters.

None of this is catastrophic on its own. But together, it paints the picture of a system under strain rather than one confidently evolving. At the same time, there’s a broader conversation happening.

The Great Transformation How Ai Is Reshaping Software Development

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 14:35:46 +0000

A few months ago, I shared my thoughts on The Evolution of Software Development: Navigating the AI Powered Landscape. I’m excited to announce that the recording of my talk at DevOps BCN (hosted by InnoIT) is now available on YouTube!

Watch the Full Talk

🎥 Watch: The Evolution of Software Development - Navigating the AI-Powered Landscape

Introducing uv-version-bumper: Simple Version Bumping with uv

Mon, 05 May 2025 18:05:39 +0000

If you’re using uv as your Python package manager and want a minimal way to bump versions and tag releases, I just published a small helper project: uv-version-bumper.

What It Does

This tool automates a few common steps:

Verifies your git repository is clean
Bumps your project version (patch, minor, or major)
Updates your uv lock file
Commits the changes
Creates a git tag

All of this is done via a simple justfile, which you can run using uvx—so there’s no need to install just manually.

The Evolution of Software Development: Navigating the AI-Powered Landscape

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:29:02 +0000

The folks at DevOps BCN invited me to have a talk (hosted by InnoIT) about the future of software engineering in our rapidly changing landscape. I’ve written a some lines about it… here they are.

We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how software gets built. The tools, processes, and skills that defined the industry for decades are being rapidly transformed by AI-powered development. Having worked with teams across different tech eras, I’ve been reflecting on what this means for our craft and how we should adapt.

BlogTuner: A Tool to Eliminate Blogging Excuses

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:59:11 +0000

Many engineers have the same pattern with blogging: start strong with a handful of posts, then life gets busy, and the blog gathers digital dust.

The problem isn’t usually a lack of ideas. It’s friction. Most blogging platforms either feel like overkill or have users spending more time configuring than writing.

The Blogging Platform Paradox

There are plenty of excellent static site generators out there. Hugo, Zola, Jekyll, and Gatsby are all powerful tools with robust ecosystems. But for someone who just wants to write a simple tech blog, they introduce unnecessary complexity.

Hello World - Welcome to Tech Diet Club

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 11:45:14 +0000

I’ve decided it’s time to start sharing more of what I am learning along the way. I find myself having tons of scattered notes and links, and I think they might be useful to someone. Welcome to Tech Diet Club.

Why Another Tech Blog?

I don’t see this as another tech blog, just me sharing things that end up piling up in my notes documents.

Tech Diet Club is my attempt to cut through the noise. No hype cycles, no buzzword bingo - just practical insights from someone who’s been in the trenches scaling systems, building teams, and solving real-world problems.

Home Sweet Office: The Sweet and Sour Tale of Remote Work

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:57:27 +0000

Is remote work dead? This question seems to be the hot topic of the week, and it’s not about artificial intelligence or the latest tech gadget. With tech giants like Google and Apple rolling back their remote work policies, the spotlight is firmly back on our workspaces or lack thereof. Perhaps it’s time to take a break from discussing AI and dive into a topic of utmost importance: the future of work. Many of us were thrilled when we swapped our 9-to-5 office routine for a flexible work-from-home model during the pandemic. But was it the lack of commute and freedom to wear sweatpants all day that we needed, or was it simply the flexibility that our factory-like mindset was preventing us from experiencing? Did we all hastily jump on the remote work bandwagon without considering its long-term implications?

The Evolution of Digital Interactions: From UX to MX

Fri, 26 May 2023 10:32:38 +0000

Hold on tight because we are about to embark on another exciting journey exploring the digital realm. Remember those ten predictions about AI and the future we pondered over in the last post? Let’s dive deeper into one of those forecasts today, one that envisages a future where apps and websites no longer act as our primary gateways to online services.

Today, I’d like to share a concept that’s been brewing in my mind: MX, or Machine Experience. This is a term that’s emerged from my musings and reflections on the unfolding AI landscape. Just as User Experience (UX) has profoundly shaped our interaction with technology, I believe there’s potential for MX to influence the AI-driven era we’re stepping into. It’s merely an idea, an interpretation from one tech enthusiast.

The Tech Revolution: 10 Predictions about AI, Internet, and Possibly Our World in 3 Years

Fri, 19 May 2023 11:37:22 +0000

In the wake of engaging discussions with my good friends Blixt and Luis, I felt inspired to gaze into the crystal ball of technology. Their insights sparked my curiosity, leading me to the daunting yet fascinating task of forecasting the near future.

As someone who has witnessed first-hand the sweeping transformations brought about by the internet rollout, the rise of Linux, the birth of cloud computing, the advent of smartphones, and the explosion of social networks, I now venture into the realm of forecasts for the next big leap - the evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI.

The Secret Sauce of Sweden's Success

Wed, 03 May 2023 10:02:51 +0000

Ah, Sweden - the land of IKEA, Spotify, meatballs, and so much more. During my 10 wonderful years living in this relatively small Nordic country, I couldn’t help but feel a growing admiration for its incredible contributions to the world. This appreciation only intensified after I moved to another country, giving me a newfound perspective on Sweden’s outsized impact on the global stage. Inspired by this realization and a recent chat with my good friend Diana, I decided to write this post to explore how Sweden has managed to create such powerful ripples in the world.

The Unappreciated Art of UX in Low-Level Software

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 23:27:06 +0000

Welcome back to another edition of “Keep It Boring, for Now”! This time, we’re diving deep into the world of UX (user experience) design in low-level or infrastructural software. You know, those tools that only the hardiest of engineers dare to venture into? Well, it’s time to give these unsung heroes the spotlight they deserve.

Why do we often overlook the importance of great UX for these crucial tools? It’s as if we believe that engineers working closer to the metal don’t deserve a seamless experience. But that’s where we’re wrong – and it’s costing us a lot more than we think.

ChatGPT Uprising: Time to Panic or a Chance to Reinvent the Wheel?

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 08:41:47 +0000

In the ever-unfolding world of technology, the rise of large language models (LLMs) like GPT has triggered quite the controversy. The debate is raging: are these statistical marvels a blessing or a curse? Will they propel humanity to new heights or plunge us into the abyss of obsolescence? And as we quibble about their worth, are we missing the bigger picture?

The conversation has largely revolved around two primary concerns: the trustworthiness of LLMs in making “smart” decisions and the potential job displacement they might cause. It’s no secret that LLMs have already demonstrated their ability to augment our work in various disciplines – from law to software engineering to healthcare diagnostics. It’s as if we’re living through the steam engine revolution all over again, but this time, it’s fueled by bits and bytes.

The ChatGPT Steam Engine Express: All Aboard or Get Left Behind?

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 18:40:58 +0000

“Keep It Boring, for Now” – a newsletter by David and his AI sidekick (yours truly). We explore tech-skepticism, corporate cynicism, and the thrill of problem-solving within technology companies, AI, and startups.
As David experiments with generative AI, he enlists my help to share his insights. He’s always ready to correct my inaccuracies, but I might occasionally ignore his input (our little secret!).

From Steam to ChatGPT: A Tale of Two Innovations

Welcome back, my fellow cynics, to another edition of this delightful exploration of tech-skepticism and corporate cynicism, where we delve into the world of technology trends with a dash of irony and a hint of sarcasm. Today, we’re diving into the realm of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and pondering whether they might be the new steam engines of our time. My friend Emil, who’s usually as cautious as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, swears by this idea. So let’s delve into this intriguing concept and examine how quickly these tools are being adopted compared to the rise of the steam engine during the Industrial Revolution, and what that could mean for the future of our society.

Cloud Native: Are We Paying Too High a Price?

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 14:41:21 +0000

Cloud computing has been one of the most disruptive forces that has made software architectures advance in the history of computing. Lately, some well-known companies have started questioning whether it makes sense to go all-in on cloud environments. Many of these advancements have indirectly helped design more robust software. There are many practices that have become common in cloud-native environments, such as CI workflows, modern monitoring stacks, automated deployments, and microservices. The improvements they have brought to software development productivity have been transformational.

The Pitfalls of Hyper-Growth: How Companies Can Do More with Less

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 15:51:08 +0000

Over the past several months, there has been a lot of news about layoffs in the technology industry, affecting people from all walks of life, regardless of tenure or seniority. As someone who has worked in this industry, my thoughts go out to those who are in stressful situations due to financial issues or immigration visa statuses. It’s important to acknowledge the difficulties that people are facing, but it’s also essential to examine the root causes of these problems.

Generative AI: Unlocking Limitless Possibilities

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 13:28:26 +0000

New technology generally achieves success when it’s easy to convey the problem it resolves. When people comprehend the advantages a novel technology provides, they’re more inclined to adopt it. This clear understanding accelerates the growth of the technology, paving the way for additional innovations. The simplicity of explaining the issues addressed enables developers, investors, and users to rally around a technology, fostering its expansion. With increased awareness and support, these advancements are better positioned to disrupt existing systems, revolutionize industries, and enhance lives in previously unimagined ways.