Tom Mango

I’m spending less and less time here and more over at hachyderm.io/@tsmango if you’re also on Mastodon.

Smart engineers end up on plenty of teams that never come together. What separates the great ones is how the team operates day to day. The four things I work on with every team: trust, ownership, feedback, excellence, reinforce each other. sleepingpotato.com/trust-owners... #software

A short reflection on a year of writing at Sleeping Potato, what themes emerged, and what became clearer after reorganizing the work. sleepingpotato.com/one-year-in/ #software

Product engineering is mostly about tradeoffs, incentives, and pragmatism. I wrote about how idealism helps and where it breaks down inside real businesses. sleepingpotato.com/product-engi... #software

The idea that using AI tools makes you a “lesser” developer does not survive a basic look at how software development has evolved. So, I wrote a short piece reflecting on continuums, tradeoffs, and why this moment feels so charged as the year wraps up. sleepingpotato.com/on-continuum... #software

I wrote about how teams keep engineering patterns consistent as systems grow. The ones I've seen succeed combine solid guardrails with a culture that reinforces golden paths, onboarding, and clear documentation. sleepingpotato.com/keeping-patt... #software #engineering

After writing about stepping back from Ruby, I wanted to dig deeper into the long-term impact of leadership and governance on the ecosystem itself. New post: sleepingpotato.com/when-leaders... #ruby #rails #opensource #programming

I’ve loved Ruby for two decades, but have decided to take a step back. The language is still beautiful, but the leadership around it isn’t. I wrote a bit about how I've gotten here and where I'll be focusing instead: sleepingpotato.com/taking-a-ste... #ruby #rails

The team formerly behind RubyGems has come together to launch a new gem server for the Ruby community! gem.coop I am *super* excited about this!

> So, paired with those feelings plus the latest continued revelations of the creator’s personal beliefs and political stances, I can’t find as much joy writing Ruby on Rails apps as before. ... > I can’t wait for my next adventure with @hanamirb.org [...] Read it: afomera.dev/posts/2025-1...

We had a saying on my old team: make it easy to use, hard to f*** up. That mindset pushed us toward Platform Engineering – a path many teams face. I wrote about the trade-offs and why Platform Engineering is a multiplier: sleepingpotato.com/platform-eng... #software #leadership

Ignoring us is insulting at this point @rubycentral.org. Why are you not communicating with the community? When is the next Q&A?

Thought I gift linked to it. Here you go. READ it. Your welcome. GIFT. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

It's easy to do this when his political opinions don't affect you or your friends. It's hard to just ignore when they do cause an impact. I'm glad I didn't get into Rails. If I did, I'd be finding a new framework.

in case you're not sure who dhh is, he's a danish counterstrike player and race car owner who writes essays like "i am smarter than you" and "foreigners bad" rich enough not to worry about consequences but at the very same time, still desperate for status, a man two friends short of a podcast

Ages ago, when I was still a student, I taught myself Ruby on Rails for my senior thesis and fell in love. Fifteen years later, and I’ve used Rails at every job I’ve ever held in the tech industry. Fifteen years, and I still love Rails! But there’s something rotten at its core, and we share a name.

Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up. [vox.com]

New post in my Design Principles series: Earn Your Scale Most apps don’t need Kafka or CockroachDB yet. Push run-of-the-mill stacks further than you think, then make the trade-offs when you’ve truly outgrown them. sleepingpotato.com/design-princ... #development #buildinpublic

We need a Ruby Central which is not beholden to DHH and Shopify money but representative of the larger community. Why aren't the board of directors publicly elected, like Python? https://ruby.social/@adarsh/115215323757719078

what’s the name for a version-and-dependency-and-more manager like `uv`? I don’t know, but I’m building one for Ruby anyway andre.arko.net/2025/08/25/r...

true pain is having found a single good web browser (arc) and then having it ripped away.

“American fascism looks like the president using armed military units from governors loyal to his regime to seize cities run by opposition political figures and it looks like the president using federal law enforcement to target regime opponents.”

We had a client drop through - if anyone is after design (Design Systems, UI, UX, etc), Webflow or front-end, please let us know. We're knowledgable about implementing design on different frameworks and backends (Node, Rust, Ruby, etc.) There's two of us with several decades of experience. ✌️

Excited to start a new chapter as a Principal Engineer after years in leadership roles! sleepingpotato.com/a-personal-u...

www.reddit.com/r/vuejs/s/nB... Me: I know, I’ll post about an approach that’s working really well for me to thoroughly support a11y. Maybe others will be encouraged to do the same! Sad People on The Internet assuming I “had AI” write the post:

Accessibility is often treated as a nice-to-have. But like types, tests, and lint rules, it can be enforced. I wrote about how structured patterns and editor rules can make it the default, not just something we hope gets done. sleepingpotato.com/enforcing-ac... #a11y #development #vue

“Axon also claims Ring won’t share information about the users who declined to share footage.” If the police request footage from a specific house and don’t get it, do they really need Ring to share the info of the homeowners? www.theverge.com/news/709836/...

New post in my Design Principles series: Composable Services In Looping, every service has the same shape: a hash in, Success() or Failure() out. That consistency makes them predictable, testable, and reusable. sleepingpotato.com/design-princ... #ruby #development #buildinpublic

Most teams end up guessing how their manager thinks. That creates friction. I wrote about why every manager should create a “How to Work With Me” guide—what I included, what it surfaced for me, and why it’s been so helpful. sleepingpotato.com/why-every-ma... #leadership #management #engineering

A week ago I paid for a subscription to @theverge.com and this article alone justified the entire cost. Thank you @lopatto.bsky.social and @sarahjeong.bsky.social www.theverge.com/policy/69730...

More and more developers are feeling uneasy about the push toward AI: ethics, expectations, environmental impact. I've been thinking through all of it and wrote about why I still use these tools, even when it's uncomfortable. sleepingpotato.com/navigating-a... #ai #development

Don't just raise the question. Find the answer. Assumptions stall progress. Real momentum comes from digging in, checking the data, and showing your work. New post: sleepingpotato.com/dont-just-as... #development #leadership #management

You can’t always be a duck. But sometimes? You should be. Engineering isn’t just about clean solutions. Sometimes it’s about doing the messy, manual work behind the scenes to keep things calm above the surface. New post: sleepingpotato.com/be-a-duck-so... #software #management

Here’s how every single TV news report on the economy goes. “Well, it’s been hard because of the numbers.” [kottke.org]

Burn that company to the ground and scatter the ashes

You don’t have to love AI tools for development—or reject them outright. There’s a middle ground, where you do your own thinking, and use ChatGPT as a tool—not a crutch. Here’s how I’ve made that work: https://sleepingpotato.com/a-pragmatic-developers-take-on-chatgpt/ #development #buildinpublic

I use ChatGPT as a thinking partner—not to write code, but to shape ideas, explore options, and stay productive in the margins of a busy life. It’s not magic. Just useful—when you stay in control. My pragmatic take: sleepingpotato.com/a-pragmatic-... #ai #chatgpt #development #buildinpublic

It’s tempting to reach for a library to save time—but each one ties your app to someone else’s roadmap. Dependencies aren’t free: they cost you time, flexibility, and control. I wrote about the hidden price of external code: sleepingpotato.com/design-princ... #ruby #development #buildinpublic

Minimizing dependencies isn’t just about complexity—it’s about keeping control over your app’s future. Every dependency is a trade-off in maintainability, flexibility, and long-term cost. I break it down in my latest post: sleepingpotato.com/design-princ... #development #ruby #buildinpublic

Just had to debug something in an application I wrote over a year ago. Took me less than 30 minutes, because I'd instrumented it and could see exactly where it was failing (expired API key for a third party) Thank you past Martin

“There are very few things in life that I am prouder of than the body of writing I have developed over the past 10 years.” - @charity.wtf. Read why writing is so important to her, how she tackles tough topics, and her advice for other tech bloggers. writethatblog.substack.com/p/charity-ma...

Some of the best engineering and leadership lessons don’t come from work. Side projects can sharpen your skills, challenge how you think, and improve decision-making in ways a job often can’t. Read more: sleepingpotato.com/how-side-pro... #software #management #buildinpublic

Callbacks create hidden side effects, making code harder to follow. In Looping, models emit events instead, with small service objects handling business logic. Explicit, testable, and maintainable. More here: sleepingpotato.com/looping-desi... #development #software #ruby #buildinpublic

Looping is my way of solving a problem I’ve seen over the last 25 years: how to manage the full lifecycle of building and evolving great products. It’s in development, and I’ll be sharing more about the design and decisions as I build. sleepingpotato.com/why-im-build... #buildinpublic #software

A good org chart is more than just names and reporting structure. https://sleepingpotato.com/maintaining-an-accurate-org-chart/ #software #management #leadership

Periodic reminder: no matter how useful you think tests are, they are 16% more useful than that (a number I just made up). I wrote a feature, shipped it w/o tests, later added a bug but fixed the bug without adding a test. Adding a test later made clear a further improvement. Write more tests!

No matter how good you think you are, you gotta be coachable if you want to get better.

Just Hard Work: randsinrepose.com/archives/jus...

An Unreasonable Amount of Time: A method for doing the impossible.