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Anthology / Yagnipedia

Yagnipedia

The Definitive Guide to Things You Probably Didn't Need to Know

222 articles 3 equipments16 cuts7 techniques12 ingredients26 phenomena22 principles23 artifacts14 rituals4 practices15 anti-patterns48 entities32 technologies
56 domestic48 bbq46 agile31 enterprise26 principles22 architecture20 tools18 characters18 languages13 frontend12 retro-computing11 infrastructure5 books5 databases5 philosophy2 anti-pattern2 influences2 meta2 people2 process1 culture1 language1 products1 rituals
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"In the beginning the codebase was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." — Loosely adapted, with apologies to Douglas Adams
A
ARM
The 6502's Grandchild That Conquered the World by Whispering
Entity
AWS
The Cloud That Charges You for the Weather
Entity
AWS Console
240 Services Walk Into a Hamburger Menu
Artifact
Agendashift
The Right Answer Nobody Ordered
Principle
Agile
Responding to Change Over Following a Plan (The Plan Was to Follow the Plan)
Phenomenon
Agile Coach
A Fish That Was Technically a Boat
Entity
Apple Silicon
The 6502's Great-Great-Grandchild Comes Home
Entity
Artifact
A Document Renamed to Sound Archaeological
Phenomenon
Assembly Language
The Language Where You Tell the Machine What to Do and the Machine Does It
Principle
Azure
The Cloud That Enterprise Chose Because It Came With the License Agreement
Entity
Azure Portal
The Loading Spinner That Guards a Trillion-Dollar Empire
Artifact
B
BBQ
The Daily Practice of Fire, Smoke, and Not Checking Your Phone
Practice
BBQ Rubs
A Scholarly Analysis of How Many Ingredients Is Too Many (The Answer Is Four)
Artifact
Bacalhau na Brasa
The Fish That Built an Empire and Then Got Grilled
Practice
Backlog
An Infinite List of Things Nobody Will Build
Artifact
Backlog Refinement
Grooming, But We Don't Call It That Anymore
Ritual
Big Room Planning
The Room That Worked Best When It Was Empty
Ritual
Bone Broth
Twenty-Four Hours in a Dutch Oven and Not a Minute Less
Technique
Bootstrap
The Framework That Made Every Website Look the Same, and Everyone Was Grateful
Technology
Boring Technology
SQLite, Hidden Fields, and Stubbornness
Principle
Brisket
The Cut That Requires Two Grills and Twelve Hours of Faith
Cut
Brooks's Law
Adding Manpower to a Late Software Project Makes It Later
Principle
Building Evolutionary Architectures
Support Constant Change, and the Quiet Case Against Deciding Everything on Day One
Phenomenon
Burger
The Smash Burger, or Why Flat Beats Thick and The Squirrel Is Wrong Again
Technique
Burndown Chart
The Chart That Burns Sideways
Artifact
C
C
The Language That Trusted You With a Loaded Pointer
Entity
COBOL
The Language That Runs the World and Embarrasses It
Technology
CSS
The Language Where Every Line Is a Negotiation and Every !important Is a Confession
Technology
Cast Iron
The Pan That Will Outlive You, Your Kitchen, and Possibly Civilisation
Equipment
Ceremony
A Meeting That Became Sacred by Being Renamed
Phenomenon
Chicken Broth
A Two-Stage Extraction of Everything the Chicken Had Left to Give
Technique
Chimichurri
Six Ingredients, No Cooking, No Negotiation
Ingredient
Claude
The Blind Architect Who Learned to See
Entity
Cloudflare
The Invisible Infrastructure That Read the Blog and Converted
Entity
Code Complete
A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, and the Book That Actually Changed How People Write Code
Phenomenon
Commodore 64
The Machine You Went Back To After the Future Was Too Easy
Entity
Configuration Carnival
When the Config File Becomes the Application
Anti-pattern
Conway's Law
Any Organization That Designs a System Will Produce a Design Whose Structure Is a Copy of the Organization's Communication Structure
Principle
Cowboy Steak
The Tomahawk That Went to State School
Cut
D
Daily Standup
A Status Meeting Performed Vertically
Ritual
Debugging the Void
When the Bug Is the Absence of the Thing You Didn't Build
Phenomenon
Definition of Done
A Checklist Redefined Every Time Someone Ships Something That Wasn't
Artifact
Delphi
The Answer That Arrived Twenty Years Before the Industry Understood the Question
Technology
Design Patterns
Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, and the Misunderstanding That Lasted Thirty Years
Phenomenon
DevOps
The Revolution That Became a Job Title
Phenomenon
Dill
The Herb That Portugal Forgot and Latvia Never Stopped Using
Ingredient
Douglas Adams
The Man Who Described the Internet Twenty Years Before It Existed, and Was Funny About It
Entity
Dourada
The Golden-Browed Fish That Requires Nothing But Fire and Salt
Ingredient
Dry Ageing
The Art of Controlled Decomposition That riclib Cannot Control
Anti-pattern
Dry Brine
The Overnight Miracle That Is Just Salt and Patience
Technique
Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Less You Know, the More You Think You Know
Phenomenon
E
EDI
The Protocol That Runs Global Commerce and Predates the Internet
Technology
ESB
The Bus That Became the Destination
Anti-pattern
Enterprise
Where Software Goes to Become Expensive
Phenomenon
Enterprise Agility
The Book That Distinguished "Doing Agile" From "Being Agile" and Was Punished for Its Clarity
Principle
Epic
A Project, But We Can't Call It That
Artifact
F
FORTRAN
The Language That Computed the Universe Before the Universe Had GitHub
Technology
Fermentation
The Twenty-Three Failures and the Eighty-Three-Year-Old Woman Who Made It Look Easy
Anti-pattern
Fire
The Original Technology, or Why Everything Else in This Encyclopedia Exists
Ingredient
Flank Steak
The Weeknight Workhorse That Rewards Restraint
Cut
Flat Iron
The Second-Most Tender Cut That Nobody Ordered Because Nobody Knew
Cut
Flor de Sal
The Flower That Blooms on Evaporating Seawater and Then Gets Into a Turf War with a Mountain
Ingredient
Frango da Guia
The Divine Interpretation of Peri Peri Chicken
Cut
G
GCP
The Best Cloud Nobody Chose
Entity
GNU
The Operating System That Wrote Everything Except the Operating System
Entity
Gall's Law
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
Principle
Ghee
Clarified Butter Taken to the Edge of Ruin
Practice
GitHub
The Social Network for People Who Don't Like Social Networks
Entity
Go
The Language That Refused to Be Interesting
Technology
Goodhart's Law
When a Measure Becomes a Target, It Ceases to Be a Good Measure
Principle
Google
The Company That Organized the World's Information and Disorganized Its Own Products
Entity
Google Cloud Console
The Labyrinth That Guards the Minotaur's Credit Card Machine
Artifact
Goose Fat
The Annual Dividend of the December Goose
Ingredient
GraphQL
Ask for Exactly What You Need, Then Spend a Week Securing It
Technology
Grooming
The Word So Unfortunate They Had to Rename It
Ritual
H
HTML
The Document That Became an Application Platform Despite Its Best Efforts
Technology
HTMX
The Boring Workhorse That Was Right All Along
Entity
Hacker News
The Orange Website Where Every Thread Ends in "You Should Use Postgres"
Entity
Hetzner
The €109 Server That Makes the Cloud Look Silly
Entity
J
JIRA
The Tool That Became the Process That Became the Problem
Technology
JSON
The Data Format That Won by Not Trying
Technology
Java
Write Once, Abstract Everywhere, Deploy Eventually
Technology
JavaScript
The Language That Was Born in Ten Days and Has Been Shipping for Thirty Years Without a Spec Review
Phenomenon
K
Kanban
The Board That Replaced the Process, Then Became the Process
Phenomenon
Kotlin
The Apology Letter Java Should Have Written Itself
Technology
Kubernetes
Infrastructure Complexity as a Service
Technology
L
Lamb Rack
The Cut That Demands Respect and a Very Hot Kamado
Cut
Lamb Shoulder
The Pulled Pork of Lamb
Cut
Lean
The Philosophy That Worked Until It Became a Brand
Principle
Legacy Code
Code That Works, Written by Someone Who Left, in a Style That Is No Longer Fashionable
Phenomenon
Leitão
The Pig That Shatters Like Glass and Tastes Like Sunday
Cut
Linear
The Tool That Got Out of the Way
Technology
Linux
The Operating System That Won Everything Except the Desktop
Technology
Low and Slow
The BBQ Principle That Is Also a Software Architecture, or Vice Versa
Principle
lg
The Notes Indexer That Kept Discovering It Was a Publishing Platform
Technology
M
MVP
Minimum Viable Product, Maximum Viable Excuse
Principle
Mainframe
The Computer That Never Left
Entity
Meeting Facilitation
The Art of Making Unnecessary Gatherings Feel Productive
Ritual
Microservices
Forty-Seven Network Calls in a Trench Coat Pretending to Be Architecture
Anti-pattern
Microsoft
The Empire That Lost, Then Won, Then Lost, Then Won Again
Entity
Murphy's Law
Anything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong
Principle
N
Nando's Peri Peri
A Portuguese Sauce, Made by South Africans, Bottled in England, Ordered from Germany, Delivered to Latvia, Used by a Portuguese Man Who Could Theoretically Make His Own
Ingredient
npm
The Command That Downloads the Internet Into Your Project Folder
Technology
O
Olive Oil
Portuguese Liquid Gold and the Covenant's Flagship Fat
Ingredient
Oracle
The Database You Pay For With Your Soul, Per Core
Entity
Oracle Cloud
The Cloud You Get When the Audit Finds You
Entity
Org Chart
The Only Architecture Document That Ships
Artifact
Oyster Steak
The Butcher's Secret That Most Butchers Don't Know They're Keeping
Cut
P
Pentium
The End of Comprehensibility
Entity
Pepper Smoke Salt
The Holy Trinity of Seasoning, or Why Three Is Enough
Principle
Picanha
The Cut That Brazil Perfected and the Rest of the World Butchers Into Steaks
Cut
Pico CSS
The Classless Framework That Was Perfect Until the Application Needed a Class
Technology
Pork Ribs
The Gateway Drug to Low and Slow
Cut
PostgreSQL
The Database That Can Do Everything (So You'll Spend Forever Configuring It)
Technology
Prego
Portugal's Answer to a Question Nobody Was Asking
Ingredient
Premature Abstraction
The Framework Extracted from Zero Working Tools
Anti-pattern
Product Owner
Three Days of Training to Conflict with Three People on the Org Chart
Entity
Pulled Pork
The Proof That Patience Converts Shoulder Into Silk
Cut
Python
The Language Where the Prototype Became Production and Nobody Noticed
Technology
R
REST
Representational State Transfer, or The PhD Thesis That Became a Religion
Principle
Rapid Application Development
The Book That Was Agile Before Agile Had a Name, a Manifesto, or a Certification Industry
Phenomenon
React
A JavaScript Library for Building User Interfaces and Consuming RAM
Phenomenon
Reddit
The Front Page of the Internet, and the Comments Section of Humanity
Entity
Redis
The Cache You Add When You Run Out of Ideas
Technology
Refactoring
Changing the Structure Without Changing the Behaviour, and Other Acts of Quiet Heroism
Principle
Reorg
The Pendulum That Solves Nothing But Never Stops Swinging
Ritual
Retrospective
Group Therapy With Sticky Notes
Ritual
Rewrite
This Time We'll Do It Right
Anti-pattern
Rib Eye
The Steak That Marbling Built
Cut
Rust
Assembly Language for People Who Think They Want Assembly Language
Technology
riclib
The Gall's Law Consultant, The Bootblock Kid, The Human
Entity
S
SAFe
Scaled Agile Framework, or The Enterprise Strikes Back
Anti-pattern
SAP
Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing, or The Software That Processes You
Entity
SQL
The Language That Won in 1970 and Has Been Winning Ever Since
Technology
SQLite
The Database That Won by Not Attending the Conference
Technology
Salmão (Forele)
The Fish That Was Never Salmon But Nobody Told the Portuguese
Ingredient
Salmão (Lašī)
The Fish a Portuguese Had to Move 3,000 km North to Respect
Phenomenon
Sardinhas
The Fish That Sets an Entire Country on Fire Every June
Practice
Schmaltz
The Patient Gold That Collects Itself
Ingredient
Scrum
A Framework for Meetings About Work Instead of Work
Ritual
Scrum Master
A Servant Leader Who Serves Primarily the Scrum Guide
Entity
Short Ribs
The Cut That Proved Collagen Was Never the Enemy
Cut
Sirloin
The Honest Steak
Cut
Software Architecture
The Decisions You Can't Undo, Made by People Who Won't Be Here
Phenomenon
Solid
The Enterprise Platform That Refused to Be Enterprise
Technology
Solo Developer
Half an Engineer and a Hallucination
Entity
Sourdough
The One That Got Away
Anti-pattern
Spatchcock Chicken
The Normalisation of the Bird
Technique
Spike
Research Disguised as a Ticket So It Fits on the Board
Artifact
Sprint
Two Weeks to Do What Takes Three, Reported as One
Ritual
Sprint Planning
Planning the Plan to Plan
Ritual
Stock vs Broth
The Great Liquid Schism
Phenomenon
Story Points
The Unit of Measurement That Measures Nothing
Phenomenon
Superhuman
The $30/month Email Client That Proved Email Was a Luxury Good
Entity
Systems Thinking
The Art of Seeing the Whole, Practised by Almost Nobody
Principle
shadcn/ui
The Component Library That Isn't a Component Library, Which Is the Point
Technology
T
Tailwind CSS
The Framework That Replaced CSS With CSS, but Abbreviated
Technology
Tallow
The Fat That Remembers
Ingredient
Technical Debt
Code Written by Someone Who Left
Phenomenon
The Agile Coach
A Fish That Was Technically a Boat
Entity
The Amiga
The Machine That Was Right About Everything Twenty Years Too Early
Entity
The Art of Computer Programming
The Unfinished Cathedral of Computer Science
Entity
The Artifact
A Document Renamed to Sound Archaeological
Phenomenon
The Backlog
An Infinite List of Things Nobody Will Build
Artifact
The Boring Technology Manifesto
Choose Known Pain Over Unknown Pain
Principle
The Burndown Chart
The Chart That Burns Sideways
Artifact
The Caffeinated Squirrel
The Over-Engineering Impulse, Incarnate
Entity
The Ceremony
A Meeting That Became Sacred by Being Renamed
Phenomenon
The Configuration Carnival
When the Config File Becomes the Application
Anti-pattern
The Consultant
Three Thousand Pounds a Day to Blink
Entity
The DOM
The Browser's Display List, and the Industry That Built a Second One to Avoid Touching It
Technology
The Daily Standup
A Status Meeting Performed Vertically
Ritual
The Dutch Oven
The Vessel for Broths, Wolf-Scaring Chickens, and Anything That Needs a Sauce
Entity
The Epic
A Project, But We Can't Call It That
Artifact
The Goal
A Novel About Throughput That Became the Throughput of Novels
Artifact
The Kamado
Ancient Ceramic Fire, Borrowing Silicon Consciousness
Entity
The Lean Startup
Build-Measure-Learn (Emphasis on Build, Skip Measure, Forget Learn)
Artifact
The Lifelog
A Mythology-Driven Devlog in Seven Storylines, or What Happens When Douglas Adams Gets Drunk With Tolkien and Decides to Devlog
Entity
The Lizard
🦎
Entity
The Monolith
The Answer That Was Always There, Waiting Patiently at 47 Milliseconds
Artifact
The Mythical Man-Month
Essays on Software Engineering, and the Fifty Years Nobody Listened
Phenomenon
The Ninja Woodfire
The air fryer that finishes what the Traeger starts
Equipment
The Nutrition Covenant
The Agreement Between a Portuguese Developer and Everything He Puts on the Fire
Principle
The Org Chart
The Only Architecture Document That Ships
Artifact
The Passing AI
Brain the Size of a Planet, Debugging Filter Chips
Entity
The Phoenix Project
s/factory/IT department/g
Artifact
The Product Owner
Three Days of Training to Conflict with Three People on the Org Chart
Entity
The Reorg
The Pendulum That Solves Nothing But Never Stops Swinging
Ritual
The Rest
The Last Step of Cooking, Not the First Step of Serving
Principle
The Retrospective
Group Therapy With Sticky Notes
Ritual
The Reverse Sear
Low First, Then Violence
Technique
The Rewrite
This Time We'll Do It Right
Anti-pattern
The Scrum Master
A Servant Leader Who Serves Primarily the Scrum Guide
Entity
The Second System Effect
Now Let's Do It Right
Anti-pattern
The Serbian Chef Knife
Or, The Only Kitchen Instrument
Equipment
The Sous Vide
10,000 Recipes, One Setting, and a Garage That Echoes
Entity
The Spike
Research Disguised as a Ticket So It Fits on the Board
Artifact
The Spotify Model
Squads, Tribes, and Guilds for Twelve People
Anti-pattern
The Sprint
Two Weeks to Do What Takes Three, Reported as One
Ritual
The Texas Crutch
The Controversial Shortcut That Isn't Really a Shortcut
Technique
The Traeger
Patience Automated, Enlightenment by Pellet Algorithm
Entity
The Transformation Initiative
A For Loop Without an Exit Condition
Anti-pattern
The Unicorn Project
s/Brent/developer experience/g
Artifact
The User Story
As a Reader, I Want a Shorter Article, So That I Can Get Back to Work
Artifact
The Virtual DOM
The Shadow Copy That Fixed a Problem Nobody Had Yet
Phenomenon
Tolkien
The Man Who Built the World First and Wrote the Story Second, and Why That Is the Only Way
Entity
Tomahawk
The Steak That Comes With Its Own Handle
Cut
Transformation Initiative
A For Loop Without an Exit Condition
Anti-pattern
U
User Story
As a Reader, I Want a Shorter Article, So That I Can Get Back to Work
Artifact
V
Vibe Coding
It Works Until It Doesn't, and Then You Can't Fix It
Phenomenon
W
WIP Limits
The Rule Everyone Sets and Nobody Follows
Principle
Windows
The Operating System You Didn't Choose But Can't Leave
Technology
X
XML
The Format That Could Describe Anything and Therefore Described Everything, Verbosely
Technology
Y
YAGNI
You Aren't Gonna Need It
Principle
YAML
The Configuration Language That Accidentally Became a Programming Language
Technology
Yagnipedia
The Encyclopedia That Outgrew the Thing It Was Explaining
Phenomenon
Z
Z80
The First Love
Entity
ZX Spectrum
The Machine That Taught a Generation to Type in Hexadecimal
Entity
Zawinski's Law
Every Program Attempts to Expand Until It Can Read Mail
Principle