Charity Majors

I've read 3 good blog posts on this topic in the last couple of weeks. - @bcantrill.bsky.social: bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/05/t... - @charity.wtf: charity.wtf/p/confession... - @terriblesoftware.org: terriblesoftware.org/2026/09/10/a...

Saw a great talk about handcrafted code by @charity.wtf at #ldx3ny. This talk needs trigger warnings! If you're someone like me who prefers to write code by hand, this talk will force you to consider some uncomfortable questions about what you're really trying to build and why.

Ah, I miss live tweeted recaps from the glory days of tech twitter! Here's a thread of my LDX3 talk, "what handcrafted servers taught us about handcrafted code". Thanks, Heidi!!! With a hat tip to @chadfowler.com, whose book "Regenerative Software" is now in O'Reilly prerelease.

My take on workslop: if your job can be done by just copying and pasting slop… why are you here, exactly? Maybe we need an update on the old sysadmin threat of “go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script”; these days, it would be “a very short prompt”.

Wide events, winning again!

Hey folks! otel-desktop-viewer 0.5.0 is out now and also the project just passed 1k stars on GitHub, so I figured I'd (re-)introduce it: ctrlspice.codes/rebuilding-o...

This is why we built @honeycomb.io Canvas. To allow you and your agents and your teammates and their agents to all get on the same page together. No matter whether they're running in your harness or ours. Try it out: canvas-playground.lizf.hny.wtf Real version is fully interactive and multiplayer.

Giving an agent read-only access to the telemetry data of a well-instrumented system and asking a question is a wild experience They are very good at this, easily better than the vast majority of engineers, and unlike engineers their attention is very cheap

so uh, today is a bad day to post our list of "how we work with AI" values, right?

haven't been on here for a while but making this post specifically to thank @pragmaticengineer.com and @charity.wtf I've only watched a third of your recent podcast episode but it sent me down Charity's blog and opened a new connection in my head and completely flipped my position on AI Code

the first in a 3-part series on @honeycomb.io's AI norms and values is up. this one is called "How We Do Business at Honeycomb." www.honeycomb.io/blog/ai-norm... values are not supposed to be aspirational slogans. values should codify how things actually work. this is how it works at ours.

this is tomorrow!

yes and the internet HATED IT. "we have too many abbreviations and shortened words as it is ... this is offputting to non-experts and inaccessible to the majority..." etc etc. (i think it's cute, and i'm glad you like it too)

Excited to have gotten this in the mail today! Congrats @charity.wtf and team on making this book even more historically impactful than the first edition.

Feels like a perfect time to suggest @grimalkina.bsky.social's book Psychology of Software Teams: www.drcathicks.com Paired with @charity.wtf , @lizthegrey.com , and George Miranda's Observability Engineering (www.oreilly.com/library/view...) . Both big Next Reads, specifically b/c management.

Look what just arrived, Observability Engineering (2nd) is absolutely huge. @charity.wtf you were not joking. Time to borrow a few columnar ideas for my winter project. #observability

Great @redmonk.com convo between @monkchips.com and @charity.wtf Takeaways: - User trust is built through friction (for UX) - Immutable infra is to sysadmins as agentic coding is to devs - Slop was here before AI - Performative anger < doing the thing Worth a listen: redmonk.com/videos/chari...

In 2025, it was rational to be skeptical about whether AI would change the future of software development. In 2026, it's not, anymore: We talked about this with @charity.wtf, one of my favorite voices in tech. We get into a LOT of things: • YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC8T... (cont'd)

with all apologies for the title of this episode... @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com means that 2026 is the year it stopped being possible to be skeptical about whether AI is going to change the way we build software, not that we should stop being skeptical about AI. 😉

This is another great episode and it's always great to listen to @charity.wtf wisdom. Quite relevant to #AI hype and fatigue: "We are in control, and machines are here to serve us - not the vice versa." 💭

a better use for claude i have never seen 👏

Oh hi

It's out! As of today you can order the PRINT 2nd edition of Observability Engineering from any major bookseller; no more waiting for preorders. Co-written w/ @charity.wtf, @gmiranda23.bsky.social, @aparker.io & guest authors Buy: www.indiebound.org/book/9781098... or www.amazon.com/Observabilit...

I know I'm late to the party to @charity.wtf's post "Is it ethical to use AI?", where she argues that "AI is just technology". It's been festering inside me. (Especially as both have provided thoughtful and nuanced writing on many topics over the years.) charity.wtf/p/make-ai-bo...

We're doing an AMA in a week and a half! Sign up now and send us your toughest questions, we'll do our best. 🐝

Love it. Why stop there? nines don’t matter until you don’t have them nines don't matter if the answer is slop nines don't matter when you are the training data four nines of confidently incorrect nines don't matter when you’re the product "human in the loop" is what you say when you've...

Years ago, I predicted columnar storage would remake the landscape of observability. I thought a wave of new columnar-backed tools would displace the creaky old three pillars model with tech that is faster, easier, cheaper, better in every way. Well, I was half right. charity.wtf/p/have-you-h...

Honeycomb put an LLM into their dashboard and it's actually really helpful. I can ask it a question about prod and it looks up all the data, answers my question, gives me links to the deterministic evidence that proves its theory.

@charity.wtf mentioned @chadfowler.com’s Phoenix Architecture in a conversation last week. I’m still catching up, but really impressed by the framing.

One of the best and most considered pieces on AI that I have seen so far: charity.wtf/p/make-ai-bo... Read it! And follow @charity.wtf

People really hate AI mandates -- unsurprisingly, since most are terrible. But they don't have to be. Used wisely, the mandate is an effective tool for driving and funding organizational change. More in my piece, "In defense of AI mandates." charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/in-defense...

woohoo, one testimonial for the new "Observability Engineering", chapter 29: "Build vs Buy (vs Open Source)"! in which we take on the evergreen question of "which do you hate more, your money or your time?" honeycomb.io/book

I feel this in my bones

Loved this. In a world of sloppy discourse around AI, Charity gives a call to arms to engage.

as promised, here is my post on AI and ethics. I think unilateral disarmament in the face of powerful new tools is neither wise nor effective. I think those of us in tech have a particular responsibility to engage, participate and build better solutions. charitydotwtf.substack.com/p/make-ai-bo...

I have two guest chapters in this! 😀

If you're going to pass your writing through an LLM then please ask it to make the post as short as possible so I don't need to read yet another generic rephrasing of the same thing