Rewrite, Refactor, or Strangle? A Practical Decision Framework
A practical framework for choosing rewrite, refactor, or strangler paths, based on risk, delivery pressure, change cost, and organisational appetite.
Articles
Development
Development is the broadest category in my writing, so it works as the main archive rather than a narrow subject label. It brings together implementation notes and technical decisions, with delivery lessons from across the rest of the site.
Rewrite, Refactor, or Strangle? A Practical Decision Framework. 
Retention Theatre: Why Companies Lose Good Engineers Whilst Pretending to Listen. Retention Theatre: Why Companies Lose Good Engineers Whilst Pretending to Listen
Retention theatre explained through surveys, recognition schemes, pay, autonomy, trust, workload, management quality, and why strong engineers still leave.
Why Transformation Programmes Fail After the Slide Deck. Why Transformation Programmes Fail After the Slide Deck
Why transformation programmes fail after the slide deck, covering ownership, governance, operating‑model change, vendor fragmentation, and delivery reality.
Building an LRU Cache in TypeScript: Hash Map and Doubly Linked List in Practice. Building an LRU Cache in TypeScript: Hash Map and Doubly Linked List in Practice
Build an LRU cache in TypeScript with a hash map and doubly linked list, then compare it with a simpler JavaScript Map implementation and O(1) operations.
The Consultancy Rescue Loop. The Consultancy Rescue Loop
Consultancies can unblock stalled programmes, but without ownership transfer and internal capability growth, rescue work becomes recurring dependency.
The Deadline Debt Nobody Tracks. The Deadline Debt Nobody Tracks
Deadline debt explained as hidden rework, incidents, technical debt, quality loss, and recovery cost when teams compress quality without recording trade‑offs.
When Sass Colours Break After a Next.js Production Build. When Sass Colours Break After a Next.js Production Build
Diagnose Sass colours that survive compilation but break in Next.js production CSS when minification creates invalid mixed‑unit legacy rgb() values.
Mastering Server Components in Next.js. Mastering Server Components in Next.js
Mastering Server Components in Next.js, including client boundaries, data fetching, caching, streaming, and the mistakes that make App Router code messy.
The Engineering Capability Trap. The Engineering Capability Trap
Outsourcing can accelerate delivery, but if it replaces internal ownership, companies lose platform knowledge, leverage, and the ability to change safely.
HTTP 402 finally Found a Purpose. HTTP
402finally Found a PurposeHTTP 402 was reserved for future payment systems. AI crawlers, paid access and agentic payments may finally give this status code a practical web role.
LeetCode: 'Maximum Subarray' and Kadane's Algorithm Explained. LeetCode: 'Maximum Subarray' and Kadane's Algorithm Explained
Maximum Subarray and Kadane's Algorithm explained with TypeScript, showing how a linear pass tracks current and best sums across positive and negative values.
The Seniority Trap: Hiring Experience Without Giving Authority. The Seniority Trap: Hiring Experience Without Giving Authority
The seniority trap happens when organisations hire experienced engineers for judgement, then deny authority, access, decision rights, and influence.
The Talent Bar Paradox in Engineering Hiring. The Talent Bar Paradox in Engineering Hiring
Companies talk about a high hiring bar, but weak offers, slow interviews, and vague criteria drive strong engineering candidates out long before a decision.
The Web is Becoming Machine‑Readable First. The Web is Becoming Machine‑Readable First
Machine‑readable websites need more than schema. They need stable pages, clean entities, useful metadata, feeds, APIs and content that survives extraction.
Converting Objects to Query Strings and Vice Versa. Converting Objects to Query Strings and Vice Versa
Converting objects to query strings is essential for handling URLs in JavaScript. Here, I explore encoding, parsing, and managing query parameters in Next.js.
The False Economy of Cheap Engineering. The False Economy of Cheap Engineering
Cheap engineering can shrink payroll, but it often increases rework, instability, contractor spend, supplier dependence, and total delivery cost later.
HTTP Cache Validation with ETag and Last-Modified. HTTP Cache Validation with
ETagandLast-ModifiedETagandLast-Modifieddrive conditional HTTP requests and 304 responses. See how precedence, weak validators, CDNs, and cache policy affect revalidation.
Best Practices for Managing Environment Variables in Next.js. Best Practices for Managing Environment Variables in Next.js
Best practices for managing environment variables in Next.js, so secrets stay server‑side and deployments do not freeze the wrong values at build time.