02 Jun 2026
https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/stop-using-conventional-commits/
You’ve almost certainly encountered Conventional Commits before. It may have reared its ugly head in the changelog of an open source project you’ve used. It may have been the enforced commit format for an open source project you contributed to. A lot of people swear by it. I swear at it. Even though it is used by a large number of popular open source projects, Conventional Commits is an actively bad standard which encourages focus on the wrong things and fails to deliver on its promises.
07 May 2026
https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/resume-tips/
I have been asked a few times to review student resumes and in my current position I review quite a few resumes of potential candidates. I think a lot of resume advice out there is tied to formatting, presentation, and writing style. While all of that is important, I think that it’s been well-adjudicated. In this article, I would like discuss the content of your resume. I’m going to describe three rules that I made up to guide your resume’s content.
02 Sep 2025
https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/building-swe-career-in-llm-world/
TL;DR Getting an entry-level software job is harder now than at any time in at least the last decade. Building a career in software is (and always has been) hard, but highly rewarding if you succeed. The key is to take ownership of both your work and your career trajectory. In this article, I am going to discuss how to build a career in the software industry. We will explore career tracks, and discuss the attributes needed to become a senior software engineer. Then I will provide my view of how...
10 Aug 2025
https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/vibe-coding-doesnt-require-llms/
I recently read I Know When You’re Vibe Coding by Alex Kondov in which he described certain characteristic “smells” of vibe-coded software. For example, he points to LLMs proclivity to pave their own path and go against established patterns within a project. The article resonated with me, but I realized that it resonated with me at a deeper level than just explaining my interactions with LLM-written software. I realized that I’ve seen these “smells” before in pre-LLM software (especially that wr...