MATLOCK · ENGINEERING FIELD NOTES & POSTMORTEMS
Engineering Field Notes (2026)
Primary-source engineering postmortems, runnable code antidotes, and Operator Q&A on AI code quality, Dark Code risks, and pre-push verification.
The Desk Trap and Polite Code (Why Heavy Background Loading Freezes Fast Computers)
A builder perspective on workstation lockups, the hidden cost of uncontrolled runtime loading, and practical code patterns for polite background execution.
Why Complex AI Coding Tools Cost 3x to 5x More Without Raising Accuracy
Primary-source breakdown of the agentic harness tax, KV-cache prefix breaks, the 700-firm PR review bottleneck, orbital compute economics, and a runnable 3-metric session redline gauge.