About

I build software, and I write about what it's like to build software — the parts that don't show up in a changelog.

My name is Jonas Whitfield. I've been writing code professionally for eleven years, mostly in small teams where one person has to hold the whole picture in their head. I've worked on a payroll system that processed a billion kroner a year, a mapping tool for cyclists, and a scheduling app for a hospital in Aarhus that I still think about more than I expected to.

Somewhere along the way I started keeping notes. Not documentation — notes. Observations about why a rewrite failed, what a good code review actually feels like, how a bug can hide for months in a place everyone had already checked twice. Those notes turned into essays, and the essays turned into this site.

What I write about

Three things, mostly.

• Craft. The unglamorous decisions that make software last: naming, boundaries, the discipline of deleting code.
• Attention. How to work on one thing at a time in a world engineered to interrupt you.
• Place. Cities, walks, and the way a change of scenery rearranges what you're able to notice.

A few facts

I live in Copenhagen with my partner and a cat named Bramble who has opinions about keyboards. I write in the mornings before work and edit on weekends. I read more nonfiction than fiction, though I'm trying to fix that. I bike everywhere, even in February, which is either a personality trait or a mild form of stubbornness.

Before software I studied philosophy, which mostly taught me to ask better questions and to be suspicious of my own first answer. I still think that's the most useful training I've had.

Elsewhere

You can find me on GitHub, or write to me at hello@example.com. I read everything and reply to most things, usually within a week.

— Jonas