Swizec Teller is a software engineer, speaker, and educator sharing lessons from his journey from junior developer to Silicon Valley. He writes about engineering skills, career growth, mindset, and practical tactics for succeeding in tech.
68 articles from this blog
Swizec Teller shares his experience using AI to migrate a design system, highlighting the 'spaceship problem' where AI generates code quickly but requires extensive cleanup.
Exploring how AI agents enable safe big-bang migrations, with a case study of rewriting Bootstrap to Tailwind in one massive pull request.
How to be useful as a software architectSwizec TellerJuly 25, 2026Ever worked with a useful software architect? Yeah me neither. But I sure have tried
Swizec.com migrates to TimberJS, a new React framework, for faster deploys and improved performance using React Server Components.
An experienced engineer discusses why project management is a common blind spot for senior developers and how to overcome it.
Explores how the theory of constraints applies to AI-assisted coding, showing that code review bottlenecks limit shipping speed despite faster code generation.
A developer uses 'vibe coding' with AI to rewrite his blog from Gatsby to TimberJS, achieving faster deploys.
Explores how engineers' specializations shape project outcomes, using dashboard examples to show backend vs frontend approaches.
A war story about refactoring a startup's billing system from a janky Python script to a scalable solution, highlighting tech debt and engineering challenges.
Explores how good software is invisible and user-focused, discussing product engineering and user outcomes with insights from a podcast.
AI makes work feel productive but not finished; focus on user outcomes over artifacts.
Analysis of how engineering career levels have shifted from skill progression to a focus on scope ownership and hiring expectations.
A developer shares a workflow trick: using AI bots to fix code in pull requests instead of leaving comments, speeding up reviews and shipping code faster.
Explores how AI impacts software engineers' roles, focusing on mental load and the value of ownership.
Explores building AI agents using RAG, tool calling, and memory, with practical insights from a key paper and Anthropic's SDK.
Article discusses the importance of using evals to measure AI improvements when adding AI skills to your resume.
A developer shares how AI now writes 97% of their production code, detailing workflow changes and lessons learned from using Cursor agents.
A blog post advocating for reading academic papers as a key learning method in tech, sharing personal experiences and tips.
How watching users work helps engineers build better software by identifying pain points and automating fixes.
Turning frustration into productivity by automating repetitive tasks, removing work, and solving problems permanently in software engineering.
