Atomic Spin
Articles about Atomic Spin
Start With the Request for Information (RFI)
More and more founders and teams are reaching out to us with a request for proposal (RFP) in hand. Increasingly, there’s a pattern behind it: they built a proof of concept with AI, then asked AI to turn it into an RFP. The document is lengthy, structured, and confident.
Write End-to-End Tests in Your Backend’s Language
For teams that own the backend, I treat test-data setup as the primary design problem. It should shape the choice of testing tools.
Working in Kotlin: Waiting Around with Coroutines
For part 2 of this Kotlin series, let’s talk about waiting. Kotlin’s coroutines let us write that waiting as ordinary-looking function calls.
Walk the Halls: Understand a Business to Build a Better Product
Working in health tech, we’re constantly making analyses and judgment calls. Instead, walk the halls and make the right call the first time.
My Coding Agents: Off My Laptop and Onto a Remote Server
If the agent is running on the laptop, closing the lid ends the run. For a while, I planned around it. Then I stopped.
Get Into Agentic Development From the Shallow End
How should I maintain and expand systems as my workflow and my confidence in using agents for development changes?
Stop Using Java When Kotlin Exists
Kotlin is fully interoperable with Java. It literally compiles to the same bytecode that Java does, down to outputting the same .class files.
A Linux Toolkit for Disk Image Recovery
Deleting a file doesn’t always remove its contents right away. A raw disk image may still contain deleted file entries for reuse.
Even with LLMs, Let’s Pair Together
For all the good and bad that has come with the LLM domination of software development recently, one aspect I can definitely appreciate is that everything feels on the table when it comes to figuring out how to best approach our jobs. Granted, that’s also the part that terrifies me. It’s definitely my and many others’ first big industry sea change. However, I’m at least fortunate enough to work with and for people who trust each other.
3 Perks of Working at a Flat Org
Atomic is flat; there’s none of the vertical slicing where you take something to your manager, who takes it to their manager, and so on.
Now is the Time to Learn the Software Development Lifecycle
Learning the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) has never been easier. When I say “learning,” I mean good old-fashioned reading the docs, trying something, failing, trying again, probably failing once more, and finally succeeding. Whatever part of the lifecycle you want to understand still needs that attention. The traditional parts of the SDLC are planning, requirements gathering, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance.
How AI Let a Non-Technical Delivery Lead Work in the Data Layer
As a delivery lead, data-layer troubleshooting has historically been developer work: SQL fluency, comfort operating in a production database, and the confidence to investigate without breaking anything. For an accounting-based client, when their data didn’t reconcile or make sense, that question went to a developer.
I Booted an Apple IIe for the First Time in 30+ Years
I was living my vintage tech dream, and after a few minutes of doing the “Intro to Apple” program, I heard a loud pop and saw smoke.
My First Agentic Project: The Blank Page Was the Hardest Part
I expected my first project using agentic development to feel smooth and easy. But when I started, I had more questions than answers.
Write-Only Architecture in a Health App
Our health app is write-only. It pushes data out and never reads back, which made the security review trivial and the web port nearly free.
Concurrency Control: Arbitration vs. Serialization
Concurrency control comes in two kinds, and most distributed-systems failures are a misassignment between them.
AI Power Tools and the Ignorance Problem
Power tools are dangerous and also incredibly beneficial in specific contexts, similar to the current paradigm of AI use.
A Bilingual Developer on Debugging in Her First Language
I was working with Codex on a CQRS architectural issue, which was new for me, when something unexpected happened. Most of my experience has been in CRUD-style applications, where you read and write to the same model and the mental model is fairly straightforward: one source of truth, one path in and out. CQRS splits
AI Authorship: Use Curiosity, Craft, and Care
While working with a small team during an RDP engagement, I started paying attention to how much authorship we give AI over each artifact.
Build Trust on a Short Project
Here’s what I learned from being on a short software development project with 3 weeks to produce an ambitious set of goals.
Test GitHub Actions Locally with Act
GitHub Actions are a great way to implement CI/CD into your projects, whether personal or professional. GitHub has a lot of great tools to help with CI/CD, but GitHub Actions in particular is very helpful. However, writing actions can be tedious and a little annoying, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. On top of being difficult to write, they’re extremely hard to test. This is because, to ensure that a workflow is working properly, you have to use certain triggers, or the workflow has to already exist on main to access it.
Your Coding Agent Should be in Jail. Here’s Why and How
The more useful coding agents become, the more I start thinking about what the coding agent can reach. My answer: give Codex its own jail.
2 Changes Made Our Azure Durable Functions 3X Faster
Two changes, 3x faster. The real lesson was that Durable fan-out is a two-part switch that only works when you flip both halves.
I Used a Pinterest Board to Get Better Results From Claude Design
I’ve been building out a portfolio site for my creative work. While I have hesitations about mixing AI with my art, I decided to use this website as an opportunity to try out Claude Design. Like most people who’ve tried generating a design with AI, I ran into the same issue over and over. I’d type out a paragraph describing the look I wanted and get back something technically fine, but completely generic. I was trying to describe a visual style in words. The problem is, I know what I want when I see it, but I don’t always know how to say it.
GitHub Alternative List: Quintessential Options
Here’s the quintessential GitHub alternative list for the quintessential GitHub power user. Nothing can stop your development process.