writing / the stack report
The Stack Report
Approximately monthly, a longer-form piece on application development, operations, and the process (and business) of making software. There's an RSS feed, or subscribe by email.
01 The archive
25 issues, newest first.
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Deploy your fork
Only half-joking on mastodon the other day:
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It's OK. Do Your Thing.
Some (reluctant) thought on our AI moment
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In search of a new contribution model
Maxim: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
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Thoughts from DjangoCon Europe
A bit of a roundup post this month. I wanted to talk about the recent DjangoCon Europe, and the reactions coming out of that.
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Decoupling Your Business Logic from the Django ORM
Where should I keep my business logic? This is a perennial topic in Django.
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New packages and contributions
I’ve been quiet on the Stack Report, the last couple of months. I had a very busy start of the year with work, and then with the other things going on, I got to plenty of drafts but nothing quite …
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Making do with less in 2026
New year. New you. Or something like that. A time for resolutions at any rate. Dry January, a new exercise routine, a plant-based diet. Choose your poison.
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An Annual Release Cycle for Django
A proposal for moving Django to an annual release cycle.
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Same again. No rush.
Twenty years in. Twenty to go.
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Looking forward to Django 6.0
About the upcoming release of Django 6.0.
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Slow open source.
There’s this kind of feeling that open-source projects need to move quickly.
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Open Source as a business owner
The totally rational business case for contributing time and money to open source.
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How we make decisions in Django
Write up of my recent talk at DjangoCon Europe, in Dublin, on How we make decisions in Django.
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If I were starting out now…
Welcome to the second post in a subscriber-only series on finding your market, and niche, in the software. In case you missed it, part one was a high-level overview of where we’re at: In this economy?
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In this economy?
Exploring software's market potential and the need for developers to network beyond tech firms.
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Managing Django’s Queue
With the Django 5.2 prerelease cycle now in play, eyes can turn to what might come in for Django 6.0. Top of that list is the interface part of django-tasks, the proposal to bring background task handling into Django.
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From Idea to Plan
The new year is upon us. It’s a time of rest, and of reflection. It’s a time of optimism, where we’re naturally led to draw up our plans for what’s to come. If you’re anything like me, ideas are numerous. …
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Getting stuff done
The holidays are upon us, or rushing in. I want to wrap up the year with a two-parter, back on the topic of shipping software on time and on budget.
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Thoughts on Django’s Core
To tie-in with the upcoming elections for Django's Steering Council, I wanted think again about Django's Core, let's call it Batteries Included Revisited.
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Avoiding R&D in Production
Since the days when computers first came into common use, there must have been tens of thousands of accounts receivable programs written. There are probably a dozen or more accounts receivable projects underway as you read these words. And somewhere …
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Evolving Django’s auth.User
Folks will occasionally ask if I've got an opinion on some topic Django related. I'll reply that I've got an opinion on everything, so I've certainly got an opinion on that.
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Growing your Business Logic with Django
Last month we looked at Locality of Behaviour, and how focusing on that allows you to reduce churn as the complexity of your application grows. It’s time to apply that to the perennial topic of where you should keep your …
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Locality of Behaviour
This month’s Stack Report is the first of a two-parter. I’m also making it freely available to all, since it touches on topics I talked about in my recent DjangoCon Europe talk in Vigo, and I want to expand on …
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Shipping Software on time and on budget
It’s almost axiomatic that estimating software projects is hard. Stories of I.T. project overruns are commonplace. There’s a whole software crisis devoted to it. The canonical book on the subject calls it the Black Art – one that we’re not …
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This month I've been reading: Software Design by Example
Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost1 that it…