Software design is a deliberate process, and requires deliberate effort.

We want the text to be simple, unsurprising. We want our readers to feel a sense of cozy familiarity.

To understand a word, we must understand the topology that surrounds it.

Code review is about more than checking for mistakes; it is about ensuring simplicity.

This embarrassment, when you look for it, is plain to see.

Confronted with this dissonance, this ugliness, we inevitably gesture towards a better future. We talk about better design, better practices, better processes. We await better abstractions. We imagine a world in which we cannot help but make something beautiful.

Imagine the year is 2013, and a friend is telling you about their new startup: Uber, but for dog walkers.

The simplest explanation is rarely a straight line. To explore our software, a reader must traverse its structures.

The purpose of each layer is to reduce the audience for the next.

A name like 'count' describes its relationship to the surrounding code, the singular way in which it differs. In all other ways, we must assume, it is similar.

A good interface is usually where our explanation ends, but always where it begins.

An interface suffices whenever the underlying details become textural; we know they exist, but wouldn't notice if they changed.

Evolution is a blind watchmaker; we, on the other hand, can see.

A piece can only be understood through its relation to the whole.

Definitions and references for this newsletter's core concepts.

For many in the software industry, "coupling" is a dirty word.

Every explanation is comprised of three parts, and only one of them is said aloud.

As software designers, our goal is to reduce complexity. We want our software to be easier to understand, and easier to change.