Junior Developers Should Not Touch Tests: A Provocative Case for Gatekeeping Quality

Junior Developers Should Not Touch Tests: A Provocative Case for Gatekeeping Quality

The Uncomfortable Truth Nobody Wants to Hear Let me start with something that will make your Twitter timeline combust: junior developers writing tests is like letting someone learn to drive by driving a school bus during rush hour. Sure, they’ll probably survive, and maybe even learn something. But is that really the best use of everyone’s time and sanity? I can already hear the collective gasp from the test-driven development zealots, the agile evangelists, and the “everyone should code review everything” crowd....

February 17, 2026 · 9 min · 1810 words · Maxim Zhirnov
What separates a strong senior engineer from a harmful “architecture philosopher”

What separates a strong senior engineer from a harmful “architecture philosopher”

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February 16, 2026 · 1 min · 2 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Code Ownership or Code Fiefdoms? When Responsibility Turns into Territory

Code Ownership or Code Fiefdoms? When Responsibility Turns into Territory

In medieval times, lords ruled their fiefdoms with an iron fist. They had absolute authority over their territories, decided who could enter, what could be built, and who could leave. Fast forward to the modern software engineering era, and you might find something eerily similar lurking in your codebase—except instead of castles and moats, we have pull requests, code reviews, and firmly guarded repositories. Code ownership is supposed to be a good thing....

February 16, 2026 · 13 min · 2675 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Side Projects That Actually Grow Your Skills Instead of Just Filling GitHub

Side Projects That Actually Grow Your Skills Instead of Just Filling GitHub

The GitHub Graveyard: Why Most Side Projects Fail Let’s be honest—your GitHub is probably littered with half-finished projects that seemed like brilliant ideas at 11 PM on a Tuesday. A repo with a README that says “TODO: add documentation,” three commits from last year, and approximately zero stars. We’ve all been there. The project started with enthusiasm, but somewhere between week two and month three, it quietly died on the vine....

February 15, 2026 · 10 min · 1948 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Worship of Seniority: Why Some Seniors Block Progress

The Worship of Seniority: Why Some Seniors Block Progress

Let’s talk about the elephant in the conference room—the one that’s been sitting there since 2005 and absolutely refuses to learn Slack. I’m not talking about older workers themselves. I’m talking about the organizational pathology that treats seniority as a substitute for judgment, experience as an excuse for inflexibility, and tenure as immunity from accountability. It’s a disease that quietly kills innovation, poisons team dynamics, and—here’s the kicker—actually harms the very people it claims to protect....

February 15, 2026 · 8 min · 1701 words · Maxim Zhirnov