Posts

What Is Technical Debt? A Pragmatic Guide for Startup Teams

Technical debt isn’t just messy code — it’s a trade-off. In this post, I break down what tech debt really is, the different types teams encounter, and when it’s actually smart to incur it. From MVP shortcuts to regulatory deadlines, I share real-world examples, a decision-making framework, and tips for making debt visible and manageable — without slowing your team down.

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The AI Prompt I Wish I Had While Documenting SaMD Systems in Rails

At Buoy Software, I led the design and development of our first Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), which was my first experience operating within an FDA-regulated environment. It was a great learning experience, but it came with a lot of heavy documentation. One of the most time-consuming parts was compiling the Design History File (DHF) — the set of artifacts that describe how the system was built and tested. A central piece of that file is the Software Design Specification (SDS), which describes the behavior, design, and rationale for each component in the system.

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My Journey into 3D Printing with the Bambu Labs P1S

Over the years 3D printing has become more and more common. I’ve casually followed along thinking it was something that seemed fairly interesting but something out of my reach whether it be due to pricing or lack of ability to have anything useful to print. However recently for my 39th birthday I received a Bambu Labs P1S with the AMS and I can’t believe what I’ve been missing out on for the last few years. Here’s what I’ve learned.

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How Buoy Software is Redefining Rails Development with ViewComponents

This post was originally posted on the Buoy Software blog.

In the ever-evolving world of web development, choosing the right technology stack is crucial for building efficient and maintainable applications. We moved away from React and GraphQL, opting instead for traditional REST APIs and Rails-based views, leveraging the power of the ViewComponents gem.

The initial tech stack: React and GraphQL

Buoy Software’s journey began with a mobile application built using React Native and powered by a GraphQL API in a Ruby on Rails application. The success of this project led us to adopt similar technologies for our web application, resulting in a React based front-end using webpacker. This approach allowed for code reuse and consistency across platforms, which seemed like an ideal solution at the time. For our small team, it was easier to maintain a shared pattern when moving between the React Native application and our web application.

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Acceptance Tests with Subdomains

This post was originally published on the thoughtbot blog.

You’re excited about building a new application which allows users to sign up and host their own blog. You decide that each blog will have their own space by providing a subdomain.

Let’s start off with a feature spec.

require "rails_helper"

feature "user views a blog" do
  scenario "homepage" do
     blog = create(
      :blog,
      subdomain: "bobloblaw",
      title: "Bob Loblaw's Law Blog",
      description: "Welcome to my new blog.",
    )

    visit root_path

    expect(page).to have_content blog.title
    expect(page).to have_content blog.description
  end
end

In our app we render the blog homepage using the following:

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