Hello friend, I'm Aaron.
I've been leading engineering teams for over three decades. From video games to speech recognition to data center infrastructure to digital ads, retail media, and B2B2C retail, I've crossed multiple domains. My passion is building great teams and mentoring. I write here about management, engineering craft, AI, and the occasional Batman reference.
Featured
All writing →Never Skip Leg Day: Introducing Agentic Sprint Zero
Most 'bad AI code' complaints are about skipped setup. Introducing Agentic Sprint Zero: a small deployed system that calibrates your agent's guidelines first.
High-Protein "Marry Me" Beans, Peas & Mushrooms
A weeknight riff on Nora Cooks' viral Marry Me Chickpeas, adapted for more protein, no sun-dried tomatoes, and a wife who doesn't like bean pastes.
Recent
Older posts →- Jul 13, '26
Documentation with video beats mermaid???
I documented the same data pipeline two ways, a written C4 doc and a five-minute animated video. Both took me about hour. I expected video to be much better, but judge for yourself. I think there is a future where video …
→ - Jul 10, '26
If Erling Haaland Were a Software Engineer, He'd Never Get Promoted
Norway's World Cup hero fails every activity metric we track. What Haaland's walking says about war rooms, dashboards, and who gets promoted.
→ - Apr 26, '26
The Island of Misfit Toys: Making the Azure Private Link Video
How my initial researched deep-dive created an excellent first storyboarded script, and how my second draft became the 5-minute explainer on Azure Private Link that I wanted.
→ - Jan 01, '26
2026: Year of Community
AI is making answers abundant and human connection scarce. That scarcity is about to become the most valuable thing we have.
→ - Nov 30, '25
The North Star: Why Engineering Teams Need a Vision to Navigate By
I’ve watched talented engineering teams burn out not from working too hard, but from working without direction. The pattern is always the same: leadership announces a new strategic pivot every quarter, teams …
→ - Oct 25, '25
Why Your Strategic Planning Fails (And How to Fix It)
Why Your Strategic Planning Fails (And How to Fix It) I’ve seen more agile planning sessions derailed by politics than by any technical challenge. It always starts the same way. You get the right people in a …
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Archive
By year →- Oct 12, '25
AI Won't Kill the Middle Manager, It Will Free Them
I got into management because I saw myself as a player-coach. I could create software and make my teams more effective. The most rewarding part? Shielding creative people from bad direction and then watching them …
→ - Sep 06, '25
Streamlining Blog Writing with Claude Code: My Complete Workflow
Introduction For over 25 years, I’ve blogged through countless iterations of my writing and technical processes. Recently, I’ve found something that makes writing enjoyable again: Claude Code. This …
→ - Sep 05, '25
Agile vs Economic Downturns
How economic uncertainty erodes psychological safety and derails agile transformations.
→ - Aug 27, '25
The Weapon by Fredric Brown
𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗼𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘈 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘣𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘈 𝘮𝘢𝘯, 𝘢 𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵, 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘥. 𝘏𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘢 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳, 𝘢 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦. 𝘏𝘦 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘴 …
→ - Jul 14, '25
We Finally Care About Context
I was reviewing an older repository during a production incident the other day and couldn’t figure out what sections of the code were doing or what the overall system looked like. It’s so frustrating to be in …
→ - Jun 24, '25
The Lost Art of Casual Conversation
In our hyperconnected world, we've forgotten how to have meaningful casual conversations without agenda or purpose, or so I thought
→ - Feb 05, '25
How My Marriage Protects Me From Bots
A bot sends me an inappropriate linkedIn solicitation about adding fire to my marriage
→ - Jan 29, '25
The Aging Programmer
Kate Gregory's talk on 'The Aging Programmer' is relevant at any age.
→ - Jan 17, '25
Training a Model to Post on LinkedIn as Me
Introduction [Write your introduction here about why you’re training a model to post on LinkedIn as you] The Challenge [Describe the challenge of capturing your authentic voice and posting style] Approach [Explain …
→ - Dec 27, '24
Batman Is a Poor Executive
Batman is a poor leader who doesn't effective solve problems
→ - Sep 08, '22
Triage, Diversity and Farewell
Leaving gopuff was hard, time to reflect and celebrate the team we had
→ - Aug 27, '21
Azure Static Web Apps with Terraform
Example of how to setup an Azure Static Web App Using Terraform
→ - May 12, '20
CosmosDB: Stored Procedure (sproc) to update a document
A example of a CosmosBD Stored procedures (sprocs) that will do an atomic update.
→ - Apr 28, '20
CosmosDB: A Stored Procedure to merge documents on read
An example of an Azure cosmosDB stored Procedure to retrieve multiple documents and return a merged payload.
→ - Apr 26, '20
CosmosDB: Hello Stored Procedures (sproc)
A tutorial showing how a CosmosBD Stored procedures (sprocs) can be deployed, updated and tested from code.
→ - Sep 09, '17
Les Held on the Today Show
My father was featured on Hoda’s Bucket list segment on the Today show. My dad never really wanted to talk about his past in public, but recently he met one of the soldiers from the US 30th Infantry who rescued …
→ - Apr 15, '17
Answers Chat bot for your WordPress blog
Chat based interfaces, backed by powerful AI (Artificial Intelligence), are effective ways to connect with your customers.
→ - Jul 14, '13
Reading Exchange Mail with Java
Many times I’ve had to sweep an inbox and do something with the email. Typically the easiest way is to use IMAP, but our corporate email server has IMAP disabled. Fortunately 2007 Microsoft Exchange has had a rich …
→ - Sep 29, '12
Practical Hypermedia for our post ORM world
This post is for people who have started learning about hypermedia and feel that it over complicates the elegance of REST. When I started hearing about hypermedia I felt it was adding architecture acrobatics for the sake …
→ - Jun 12, '12
JIRA story point totals using Ruby and Rest
I’m using a hosted version of JIRA and needed to obtain quick totals based on filters that I have setup. I could not find any easy documentation online so I thought I’d share my quick hack. The REST API is …
→ - Mar 03, '12
Embracing change
It’s a month past due so here is my obligatory “I changed my job” post. Over the last nearly 8 years at Comcast as part of the ‘Online’ group and later as founding member of mighty Comcast …
→ - May 09, '11
Crowdsourcing the arts and a misunderstood artist is seen in a new light
This weekend I attended a gallery opening of an exhibition called ‘50 Americans’ featuring the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. Usually I have to spend the first few minutes or an Art exhibition reading the …
→ - Apr 02, '11
Using python-dulwich to load any version of a file from a local git repo
On Monday we are kicking off an innovation week (more to come on that topic) and I’ve devised a little project that includes nearly every buzzword I’m interested in. I’m spending some time doing some …
→ - Jan 23, '11
the measure of Awesome
Development at work has been trending well in the new year and the team is getting excited about our formal incorporation of practices such as TDD and pair programming. I’m definitely perceive an intangible benefit …
→ - Jan 02, '11
OSX vs Ubuntu, Windows wins?
Ever since Barcamp I’ve been shopping for a personal laptop for general use as well as a development machine that I could use for work. Our work issued machine is a loaded mac powerbook. With a unix core osx has …
→ - Nov 17, '10
BarCamp Philly 2010 Summary - Opendata and beyond
When wrapping up the VIm talk @trevmex mentioned that people share their dotFiles on github. This blew my mind. I can sit in front of anyones desk and start using their eclipse and immediately be productive. The secret …
→ - Nov 14, '10
Jugaad - India's Agile style
I’ve been reading about India’s concept of Jugaad, possibly poised to enter our buzzword vocabulary since it came up in the context of what Obama can learn from that country. Where the Agile Manifesto starts with …
→ - Nov 14, '10
my Barcamp Philly 2010 summary
Every year Philly’s BarCarmp gets better. Last year I met great people and learned new tactics from my peers. This year I enjoyed a number of roundtable discussions where we taught each other and had my core …
→ - Nov 16, '09
Cianfrani Park Dog Owners don't get it
After spending a day immersed in the utopian community of http://www.barcampphilly.org/ I came home to dystopian reality of dog owners in my local park. Basically Cianfrani park is a nice little community park that has …
→ - Oct 02, '09
PPA ending 65mpg & free parking
A friendly PPA agent gave me some unpleasant news today. I was respectfully loading my bike and moving it from its unobtrusive parking spot on 20th and Market when he walked by. I’ve notices some motorcycle shaped …
→ - Aug 12, '09
Feel bad for GM, I couldn't make this up
I went researching to Chevy Volt to find some facts to offset my calculator below. I did get lots of feedback about people thinking that price is not the only factor here. So when I went to chevy to look at …
→ - Aug 12, '09
ROI of MPG
I’ve been car shopping lately and thinking about what mileage I need in the new vehicle. The cars that I like and are more fun to drive hover just under 30mpg while the 35+ models tend to be a bit mushy on the gas …
→ - Jul 20, '09
Specialization is for Insects part II
Came across the Heinlein quote again today: http://personalmba.com/core-human-skills this time in the context of a “Business” professional. There is another point made in the blog post about how to be …
→ - Jul 17, '09
Project Management is critical for Useless projects
This about this: If you have a project with an estimated cost of $1MM and you expect a return of $1.1MM then strict governance and process controls are critical to success. A variance of 10% will take you from …
→ - Jun 17, '09
Designing a new Infrastructure is like buying a new car
Because I happen to be both buying a new car and deploying new infrastructure the realization dawned upon me about how similar these two activities are. You start the investigation with some preconceived …
→ - Jun 15, '09
HOA - Case study of failed political systems
I love to rant over how bad HOAs are. There are so many case studies in my life where otherwise happy friendly people become tyrants when given a bit of power. From the band leader that threatened my wedding would be a …
→ - May 22, '09
Google's iterative design for search
The google blog recently put up a remarkably content-free post on their product blog about how they use iterative design and usability studies to develop enhancements to their core search offering. Official Google Blog: …
→ - May 22, '09
Insta-Tag Cloud
Cute tag-cloud generator off my feed [](http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/875557/Aaron%27s_Blog ““Wordle: Aaron’s Blog”)
→ - May 22, '09
Paper prototyping success!
Over in CIM we are working on a major CMS overhaul based on Alfresco. Alfresco gives me the solid foundation of what I need in terms of content APIs, scalability and workflow. Unfortunately the UI leaves something to be …
→ - May 22, '09
The Taking of Pelham 123
Taking of Pelham 123 on Fancast! I went looking for the trailer of the original Pelham 123 and was plesantly surprised to find the full lenght movie on Fancast! This was one of my favorite movies as a kid and well worth …
→ - May 19, '09
I really enjoyed Taken
Just watched Taken and it was a well done film. It had a pace more akin to the Bourne movies with a better actor at the helm. I don’t know why it didn’t do so well at the box office, I thought that it had …
→ - May 07, '09
Peeling back the onion of stupidity
I’ve mentioned the book Adrenaline Junkies in a previous post and I’m not seeing the value in a common language for discussing problems. Today’s pattern is the ‘Onion of Stupidity’. This is …
→ - May 02, '09
Just show up
Sometimes the answer really isn’t that hard. We were recently having a lunch conversation and talking about how to get involved in the local tech community. Kevin simply stated “Just show up”. It was a …
→ - Apr 27, '09
coupling de-coupled CMS
I’m hip deep in the design of a new CMS to power some large scale sites. The big buzzword going on at this level is around how the CMS products are designed to be ‘de-coupled’. Specifically we are …
→ - Mar 08, '09
grails java.sql.SQLException: Table not found in statement [insert into
I’m spinning up a new grails experiment this weekend and ran into an error that I could not effectively google. So hopefully by adoping the very SEO style title others will benefit. I really want to like grails, it …
→ - Feb 20, '09
Smartzone shortcuts
I’m starting to get used to Comcast’s smartzone webmail front end. It is an ajaxy / desktopish mail client that exposes way more functionality then the old one. This type of functionality usually comes at a …
→ - Jan 30, '09
good meal at table 31 in Philladelphia
We went to Table 31 at the base of the Comcast center for dinner tonight. It was an excellent restaurant week menu. Most of the places doing restaurant week push the up-sell pretty hard but this was an exception. They …
→ - Jan 22, '09
Ardith learns about reducing scope
So tonight my 10 year old decided that she wanted to learn flash. We are going through a basic tutorial but she decided to make a cat (rather then a circle) walk across the screen. This is clearly scope creep! There was …
→ - Jan 13, '09
first 'real' refreshPhilly event
The first round of ‘official’ speakers set the bar pretty high for refreshPhilly. Tom Boutell from www.punkave.com gave us a talk on symphony and set the tone of the crowd as a hardcore web devs followed by …
→ - Jan 01, '09
Mummers here and abroad
Philadelphia: 1, England 0 [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“180” caption=“Philly mummers”][/caption] [caption id="" align=“alignleft” …
→ - Jan 01, '09
virus alert!
While hunting online for that movie with the couple who pay thier neighbors to act normal so they can sell thier home I got redirected to this nicely done virus page. Its a convincing experience to get the user to …
→ - Dec 23, '08
missing my mac
My sleek mac is more like a Jaguar then a chevy. Yes it is in the shop. My machine and 4 of its cousins left our office last week for an undisclosed service center for an indeterminate amount of time. I’m using a …
→ - Dec 10, '08
Netbeans for HTML-CSS work?
Due to an unfortunate series of work related events I find myself writing php code. Not only php code, but wordpress php code. That however is the topic of a later post (as is plugins that edit core code using regex …
→ - Dec 08, '08
Giving up on Apple (mouse)
My girlfriend’s mom bought her one of those inexpensive ‘wireless’ notebook mouses. It is not even bluetooth enabled, it requires a USB adapter. I used it over the weekend and found it much better then …
→ - Dec 05, '08
javaFX sneaks out the door
Sun released version 1 of javaFX today - http://www.javafx.com/ Its a competitor to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, but based on the java developer created demos it just does not look complelling enough to matter. …
→ - Nov 25, '08
A House With No Front Door Keeps you off the streets
I found an interesting article today. A House With No Front Door It is written by a product marketing professional lamenting about dealing with ‘resource constrained’ engineering teams. Seeing as how I come …
→ - Nov 15, '08
Chef Ramsay as a model manager?
I was watching Kitchen Nightmares where Chef Gordon Ramsay verbally attacks restaurant owners in order to point out the areas where they lack. I used to think he was just another character on TV but there was a turning …
→ - Nov 14, '08
BarCampPhilly part 2
Arpit led another session about how and when to use Flash in an Ajax world. One of the attendees was a Microsoft Silverlight manager and was a solid hour of dispelling myths about RIA in general. There is still a large …
→ - Nov 09, '08
BarCamp or Mac ad?
Sorting through Barcamp photos. Is this a session or mac ad? Macbooks and iphones everywhere. I’d love to know the percentages.[caption id=“attachment_66” align=“alignnone” …
→ - Nov 09, '08
BarCampPhilly was a success!!
The BarCamp happened yesterday and Philly’s brightest and most enthusiastic ‘interative media’ professionals came out in force. Barcamp is a type of grass roots conference setup by the people bottom up …
→ - Nov 05, '08
will our perception of civic duties ever be the same?
The vote turnout is really impressive. Its more like a party or superbowl. Normally people are quiet while waiting online to vote, and if there is conversation is complaining about the need to wait. Even the tv spots …
→ - Nov 03, '08
best election video so far
The combination of cutting edge on-demand video creation and old school guilt! Watch it Edit from 2025: Back in 2008 I really thought we would be doing more of this on demand video creation. Now that AI is here I do …
→ - Nov 03, '08
public takes action to stop a police beating
I came across this video on a soccer/fan site and would love to know the context. My multilingual friends are encouraged to reply….
→ - Oct 31, '08
Phillies Parade!
The fountain is green: The Fans are lined up: Like a zombie hoard the fans assemble…. Its coming soon!!! …and John took much better photos then I did:
→ - Oct 30, '08
Accidental Obama supporter?
I think I just became an Obama supporter. I didn’t mean to but I was pressured into it by the propaganda. I’ve actually been on the fence until the Palin decision. (I have daughters and have a strong opinion …
→ - Oct 28, '08
"really dumb idea" or "I hope my mom does not read this"
Last week I checked the weather and rode my motorcycle down to Philly with plans to ride back to Bucks County today. It was raining and very windy in the city so I left a bit earlier for safety sake. It was cold but the …
→ - Oct 20, '08
Specialization is for Insects
The other night we had a security issue that came up at 3am. Our combined response toolkit included DNS changes, akamai CDN configuration, adserver updates, javascript, HTML, and lots of good old fashioned interpersonal …
→ - Jul 14, '08
I just had to click this ad
I had to click on this minimalist ad. I had to know where it went…..
→ - Jul 14, '08
reminiscing the cache wars
Recently at work people are discussing the merits of different cache servers. That brought back memories of my days as the R&D Product lead for a line of cache systems. The high point was participating in the two …
→ - Jul 02, '08
1800 got Junk?
I recently purchased a ‘pre-forclosure’ townhouse and it was cluttered with a serious amount of stuff. My first thought was to rent a dumpster and hire some movers to help me empty the house. That would have …
→ - Jun 09, '08
the trifecta of personal projects
The joys of home ownership pressing demands at work have stifled my personal innovation time. Sometime in the last millennium I used be enjoy writing exploratory projects and releasing libraries that others may find …
→ - May 31, '08
The real meaning of agility
Agility is one of the most abused terms in my profession. Recent events in my day job have caused me to rethink what agility means. We have a very elegant, loosely coupled system that allows us to build entire sections …
→ - May 04, '08
Iron Man - great past the end
I thoroughly enjoyed the Iron Man movie. My son wanted more of a SpaceMarine clunky feel to the armor, but I though they nailed exactly how I saw Iron Man from my youth. At least half the theater stayed past the credit …
→ - May 01, '08
SpringSource - proving once again Java doesn't get the web
I just read an article in a java trade mag entitled: SpringSource CEO: “The Future of Enterprise Java is Clear and Bright” The premise sounds positive. Basically they took OSGI, Spring and threw it on Tomcat …
→ - Apr 22, '08
Rest as a boring servlet
A coworker whipped up a generic REST interface for any Ruby on Rails activerecord (data model). What he described (in 5 minutes) was a nice implementation. I wanted see how the generic django REST interface was coded. …
→ - Apr 19, '08
Motocycles and Python turn toil into joy
So today started out great. Temperatures in the 80’s, so I took the kiddies outside. I put my cellphone on the trunk of my sisters’s car, put the kids on their bikes, put skates on my feet and rolled out to …
→ - Apr 15, '08
csv to xml via python
Today at work our main Flash developer asked me about expanding his skills and learning either Ruby or Python. My personal preference is towards python but ruby has its place. Flash is really doing well in the …
→ - Apr 14, '08
Michael Clayton
I watched Michael Clayton today A decent legal / espionage plot. Predictive enough. The lawyer is defending an international chemical company for years. One day he goes off his anti-depressants and decides to champion …
→ - Apr 12, '08
Book Signing @ Kesher Isreal
I attended a book signing and talk by Harry Boonin at Kesher Isreal today. He gave an interesting talk about the history of the temple and an insight into the history of the Jews in Philly. An interesting bit was his …
→ - Apr 12, '08
Glock Day!
What better first post for my renovated, Philly style blog, then to mention “Glock Day”. A local range in the city (Philadelphia Archery and Gun Club) hosted some helpful representatives from Glock and …
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