David Eisinger

Dispatch #27 (May 2025) (2025-05-10)

Pollen season is over. Bamboo killing season is here. Lots to cover this month. Let’s go. Just got back from a week-long company gathering, starting in Falls Church, VA near where I grew up and heading up to River Mountain. Great to see everyone in person (and catch up with a few of my favorite former coworkers). Major thanks to my parents for taking care of the kids and animals (and also for coming down to help out while Claire took a staycation at a loft downtown).

Dispatch #26 (April 2025) (2025-03-31)

Nico received a major software upgrade this month. One day he could barely roll over, the next he’s crawling, getting into stuff, maybe even talking? (It’s a little hard to tell but I’m going with “dada” as his first word.) We finally got Nev out of the Pack ’n Play she’s been sleeping in since she moved out of our room and into a proper bed. She loves it, and it’s great that she can just get out of bed and come downstairs by herself when she’s ready to start her day.

Dispatch #25 (March 2025) (2025-03-04)

My family popped down for an unplanned visit, just in time for another big snow – felt like Christmas in February. Claire headed to Mexico with some friends, and it was great to have help with the kids, but it was also pretty special to be Nico’s guy for three days. A lot of the primary parenting duties fall to Claire, and he’s not going to be a baby much longer, so I’m glad we got that time.

Dispatch #24 (February 2025) (2025-02-05)

We actually got some snow here in Durham, which is not something that happens every year. We took the kids out sledding, and, well, I had a good time; they’ll grow into it. Nev and I built a wagon out of scrap lumber and some casters that roll a little bit too well. We let Nev pick the paint colors and so it’s three shades of pink. We built it for her to wheel her toys around, but you know we plopped that boy in there within the first hour.

Dispatch #23 (January 2025) (2025-01-03)

Happy new year! Nev turned three this month, and somewhere – not from us, as far as we know – she’s added the word “sucks” to her vocabulary. “This juice tastes like bananas … and it sucks.” This is, in my estimation, the hardest thing about parenting: how to raise a well-mannered child when there’s nothing funnier than a toddler being crass.

Local Docker Best Practices (viget.com, 2022-05-05)

Here at Viget, Docker has become an indispensable tool for local development. We build and maintain a ton of apps across the team, running different stacks and versions, and being able to package up a working dev environment makes it much, much easier to switch between apps and ramp up new devs onto projects. That’s not to say that developing with Docker locally isn’t without its drawbacks¹, but they’re massively outweighed by the ease and convenience it unlocks.

“Friends” (Undirected Graph Connections) in Rails (viget.com, 2021-06-09)

No, sorry, not THOSE friends. But if you’re interested in how to do some graph stuff in a relational database, SMASH that play button and read on.

Making an Email-Powered E-Paper Picture Frame (viget.com, 2021-05-12)

Over the winter, inspired by this digital photo frame that uses email to add new photos, I built and programmed a trio of e-paper picture frames for my family, and I thought it’d be cool to walk through the process in case someone out there wants to try something similar.

Why I Still Like Ruby (and a Few Things I Don’t Like) (viget.com, 2020-08-06)

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey came out a couple months back, and while I don’t put a ton of stock in surveys like this, I was surprised to see Ruby seem to fare so poorly – most notably its rank on the “most dreaded” list. Again, who cares right, but it did make me take a step back and try to take an honest assessment of Ruby’s pros and cons, as someone who’s been using Ruby professionally for 13 years but loves playing around with other languages and paradigms. First off, some things I really like.

Why I stopped using AI code editors · Luciano Nooijen (2025-05-19)

TL;DR: I chose to make using AI a manual action, because I felt the slow loss of competence over time when I relied on it, and I recommend everyone to be cautious with making AI a key part of their workflow.

Notes on taste and voice in the age of GenAI - cliophate.wtf (2025-05-19)

Sit down, create your thing. Copy the masters, then change a thing here and there, and slowly bring in more of yourself. Consume widely, figure out what you like and what you hate. And no matter how much you think it sucks, keep going. Keep GOING! Over time, you’ll find your own voice, and you'll develop “killer taste”. Don’t try to conform, don’t try to create for the masses, don’t try to do things you think everyone will like.

Writing Is Taking A Stab At Immortality | Brain Baking (2025-05-19)

I don’t really know (yet) where I’m going with this, except that something in the back of my mind says I’m on to something. Perhaps everyone who listens to their inner Homo Faber and has the urge to create, creates not only to satisfy that urge and to have fun in the moment here and now, but also to preserve a little aspect of the self into the unknown future.

Making a custom porteur bag - macwright.com (2025-05-19)

Overall, I’m pretty darn happy with the project. It was extremely rewarding to go on a ride with this pretty complex project that I made by hand and understood intricately. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the bags and sewn-together things that I interact with on a daily basis. I highly recommend it.

Searls of Wisdom for April 2025 | justin․searls․co (2025-05-19)

Planet Earth is undeniably a bit of a shitshow at the moment, but I'm actually feeling optimistic that we're approaching the precipice of something that will—once we get to the other side of it—feel like the beginning of a sea change in how information is organized, constituted, and distributed. To wit: skepticism of information technology has materialized and matured from opposite ends of the political spectrum, and advocates from both sides are meeting in the middle with relatively boring policy prescriptions like regulating the use of smartphones in schools and expanding the scope of antitrust actions. Seems… fine, actually?

The Imperfectionist: Navigating by aliveness (2025-05-17)

And if in a year or two or ten the paragraphs above look hopelessly naïve … well, I think I’ll be glad to have been naïve, in this context. Because I suspect that a certain form of naivete may be a precondition for aliveness.

Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era | The Walrus (2025-05-14)

“Do you know there’s a section of our customer base that buys a fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store? We have no idea what they do with them”

Part 1: How We Fell Out of Love with Next.js and Back in Love with Ruby on Rails & Inertia.js | Hardcover (2025-05-13)

This is part 1 of a series documenting Hardcover’s Alexandria release. We recently migrated our codebase from Next.js to Ruby on Rails, and it’s been amazing so far! It was a learning experience, and I’m excited to share some of our takeaways. I’ll link each article here as it’s written.

Junk Contemplations | Brain Baking (2025-05-11)

All of these things hurt my eyes, even though this has more or less been the state of stuff in our home for the past two years. I just can’t get used to it, something keeps on urging me to clean up, and I indeed have the feeling that that is exactly what I do all day long every single day—without much success.

How to think (2025-05-11)

I expect that when, and if, the AI revolution arrives, people who have the ability to think are the ones who will not be left behind. Thinkers will be the ones who will thrive in these uncertain times.