iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 13/06/2026

Fresh from the press varoa.net/2026/06/13/d...

A screenshot with this text: "The pipeline had degraded to the point of collapse. On the surface, the problem was that it converged on a choke point that was easy to saturate and hard to scale. But the real issue wasn’t having a bottleneck. It was pretending that there wasn’t one, treating back-pressure signals as a nuisance, and letting an AI-induced productivity anxiety run unchecked."

Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 26/05/2026

AI systems, at all levels of the stack (infra and workloads, both training / inference) are complex versions of distributed systems, each with very different constraints and trade-offs www.coreweave.com/blog/why-dis...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 23/02/2026

Code reviews can't keep up varoa.net/2026/02/22/c...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 09/02/2026

Just posted varoa.net/2026/02/07/a...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 09/02/2026

Optimizing software for agent-legibility is quickly becoming a hard requirement... Screenshot from the last "Joy & Curiosity" issue by @thorstenball.com More on identifiers: varoa.net/2024/05/01/i...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 16/07/2025

One of the interesting parts about software engineering is that each domain you work in requires re-asessing every pattern and best practise that seemed set in stone in other domains.

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 28/04/2025

Been inspecting some pmap outputs these days, and could not find any decent visualization tools. Here is a quick one (nods to @simonwillison.net toolbox). varoa.net/tools/pmap-v...

Screenshot of a tool to visualize pmap outputs.

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 14/04/2025

I'm not sure I'd advise solving that entire list of things up front. Pragmatism would tell you to fix those that you actually need, and at most have a plan for how would you address the rest. I say this because I've seen several points (e.g code structure, devops processes, modules boundaries..) ->

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 12/04/2025

Queuing theory: probably the hardest topic to confine to work. brooker.co.za/blog/2025/03...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 08/04/2025

When the AI spits 200-400 lines of functiona code based on a prompt, forcing a whole commit, pr, test, [review], merge cycle is just too much friction holding people back. Screenshot is from my piece varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 08/04/2025

I mention the DORA report in the piece I published today. The report has a page about AI impacting sw delivery negatively. The recommendations (screenshot) about smaller changelists and robust testing make sense, but I'm somewhat skeptical that they are viable ->

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 08/04/2025

The page about negative impact on software delivery performance landed right while writing this! varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 08/04/2025

"AI-generated code will choke delivery pipelines", just published. varoa.net/2025/04/07/a...

Screenshot from the linked article. The text reads: "Everyone is focused on the impact of AI on the production of code. But code isn’t just produced, it has to be consumed: built, packaged, tested, distributed, deployed, operated. Leveraging AI to amplify the supply of code will grow already complex systems and accelerate the pace of change. Without a realistic plan to scale delivery pipelines, we’re asking for trouble."

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 15/03/2025

Less reminded than learnt from the first time. Can't count the number of discussions I've had about using git tags as source of truth for release procedures and building artefacts. (From the NH thread about the tj-actions/changed-files vulnerability) news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 25/02/2025

The article is about turning around platform teams but some points apply to any struggling eng team buff.ly/3QlEK7q

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 14/02/2025

Great read dasl.cc/2025/01/01/d...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 14/02/2025

Cross posting bc. @rakyll.org didn't and it's massively important. 2 comments 1) We have decades of mgmt structures evolved based on a playing field where large scale coordination and alignment were essential. They are now obsolete. Some will take years to unwind them and will get overrun ->

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 07/02/2025

Pretty close to my own experience so far on small projects, prototypes and such.

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 18/01/2025

The implications of code turning into a low(er) cost commodity are wildly unexplored. (From @geoffreylitt.com on the other site, via @simonwillison.net)

Screenshot of this quote in Simon Willinson's weblog: " Today's software ecosystem evolved around a central assumption that code is expensive, so it makes sense to centrally develop and then distribute at low marginal cost.

If code becomes 100x cheaper, the choices no longer make sense! Build-buy tradeoffs often flip.

The idea of an "app"—a hermetically sealed bundle of functionality built by a team trying to anticipate your needs—will no longer be as relevant.

We'll want looser clusters, amenable to change at the edges. Everyone owns their tools, rather than all of us renting cloned ones."

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 15/01/2025

Very interesting read on energy demand / supply in the context of AI evolution. (Unfortunately I forgot who I got this from) about.bnef.com/blog/liebrei...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 11/01/2025

This piece on AI Agents from @chiphuyen.bsky.social is fantastic. Definitions are crisp and productive to reason about the topic and goes into much deeper practical details than most of the content I've found so far huyenchip.com//2025/01/07/...

Screenshot with a definition of AI Agents from Chip Huyen, explaining how they perceive environments, act using tools, and how their tools and environments are interconnected.

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 05/01/2025

This resonates with how I see AI impacting sw eng. On a side note, recently I also chose “Mission Control” for an internal tool to monitor development status, the analogy is powerful. buff.ly/3Pb0B0L via @thorstenball.com

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 01/11/2024

It doesn't seem available for all users (I got my profile link in the 3rd socials but doesn't get detected as bsky)

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 29/10/2024

Micro-optimizations. Via Adam Tooze's newsletter. www.ft.com/content/4bedfc86-df01-44…

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 27/10/2024

Anyone ran into this while running the 1brc on Linux? Hypefine is installed but the --output option is nowhere to be found in the man page. (cc @gunnar.bsky.social )

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 03/10/2024

On the flip side of this Platform topic, @justingarrison.com published something I don’t fully agree with, but has good points like: Justin’s post: justingarrison.com/blog/2024-09...

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 02/10/2024

I don’t use to pay attention to new releases but..

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 31/08/2024

From Forrest Brazeal

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 26/08/2024

Good read on the future of distsys by Colin Breck. I like the 1 way/2 way door angle and the point about programming models needing some focus on turning 2 into 1-way ones. buff.ly/3Xmhef6

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Galo Navarro @varoa.net · 20/08/2024

We'd all be better off replacing "Best Practices" with "Toolbox", or something of that kind. "Best Practice" is shorthand for a specific trade-off that worked well in many scenarios. But it's never an absolute. Doing something on the grounds that "it's best practice" alone rots brains.

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