I spent more than four decades building and leading software systems, most recently as Lead Principal Engineer at Atlassian. I have retired from corporate life and now work as an independent researcher, advisor, and consultant focused on large-scale distributed systems, desktop architecture, and software engineering in the age of AI. I am the author of several O'Reilly books and have spoken at numerous industry conferences.
My current research centers on how engineering discipline must adapt when implementation tools are probabilistic. I am building a production financial planning system as a primary research instrument — a working system that makes the question of correctness in LLM-assisted development concrete and measurable. The core claim: LLMs don't break software correctness — they relocate where it must be governed.
Recent Writing
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Engineering Alignment in Probabilistic Generation
A structural model for achieving and maintaining correctness in LLM-assisted systems, grounded in the construction of a production financial planning system.
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Governing Correctness in LLM-Assisted Development
LLMs don't break software correctness — they relocate where correctness must be governed. A practitioner account of boundary drift and how to prevent it.
Books
- Developing Java Beans
- Java & Soap
Speaking
- Atlassian's Lithium Platform: Dynamic Self-Hosted and Distributed Ephemeral
- Atlassian's Lithium Platform: Dynamic Self-Hosted and Distributed Ephemeral
- Sun Grid Demo — James Gosling's Toy Show Keynote