Notes from the trenches — shell gotchas, software engineering, and insights. Newest first.
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Building this site: pandoc, make, and nothing else2026-07-29
How this site is built with pandoc, make, and a 30-line shell script — basic commands for both tools, and why the pair beats a framework.
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Most shell scripts don’t need if2026-07-18
Guard clauses with && and || make shell scripts flatter and more readable than nested if blocks.
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git diff answers three different questions2026-07-16
git diff always compares two of three snapshots — working tree, staging, HEAD. Know which question you’re asking.
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When cat isn’t cat: an alias that corrupts your files2026-07-15
How an innocent cat alias silently corrupted config files with ANSI color codes — and the two lessons it taught.
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Shell heredocs: power, gotchas, and pro tips2026-07-14
Heredocs write files, run commands over ssh, and feed any interpreter — but quotes around the marker can trip you up. The power, the gotchas, and the pro tips.