The minimum useful README

I split a 4000-line file into 12 smaller ones this week. The smaller files weren't actually easier to understand. The 4000-line file was a problem of structure, not of length.

If a config file has more than a dozen options, half of them aren't being used. The other half are being used in ways the original author didn't predict.

Latency budgets work better than latency targets. Targets are aspirational. Budgets force you to delete features when you go over.

I write smaller commits than I used to. The commits are uglier in isolation and much easier to read in sequence.

I trust monorepos more in the second year than I did in the first. Most of the early friction goes away once the tooling catches up.

Most retry logic I've removed turned out to be hiding a real bug. The retries made the failure invisible, and the bug compounded for months in the background.