Technical Tutorials & Developer Education Archives

API Guides Are Not Textbooks, Don’t Expect Your Users To Use Them That Way

Your users will come to your solution with a wide variety of experiences and knowledge. They’ll also enter the documentation on a specific page likely based on their initial query into Google. This isn’t a call to better leverage SEO in your API docs, nor is it one to dumb…

A user holding a security alert faces a maze of support forms, email routes, tickets, and dead ends before the report reaches a security operations team.

Security Reporting Is a Security Control. Treat It Like One.

August 14, 2026 High Level Tech Intro Startups Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

This is Part 2 of When Your Brand Becomes the Bait, a three-part series examining brand-impersonation phishing, security-reporting friction, and the privacy risks created when abuse reports are forwarded to suspected operators. In the first article in this series, I described a phishing attempt that reached me through Nextdoor shortly…

A Fake Nextdoor Page Asked for My Credit Card. What Should Happen Next?

August 6, 2026 High Level Tech Intro Startups Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

This is Part 1 of When Your Brand Becomes the Bait, a three-part series examining brand-impersonation phishing, security-reporting friction, and the privacy risks created when abuse reports are forwarded to suspected operators. On Friday, July 31, I posted several items for sale on Nextdoor. Almost immediately, I received a direct…

They Called It Tokenmaxxing. I Call It Goodhart’s Law With a Credit Card.

June 25, 2026 Attitude Startups Technical Tutorials & Developer Education Uncategorized No Comments

There is a concept in economics called Goodhart’s Law. The short version: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. You’ve seen it in sales organizations where reps optimize for activity metrics instead of revenue. You’ve seen it in customer support teams where handle…

Vibe Coding a WordPress Plugin – What Worked and What Didn’t, plus What I Paid Attention To

March 30, 2026 High Level Tech Intro Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

I use vibe coding more and more lately as see opportunities to safely leverage it. There are areas where I’m hesitant to use it though. Not because I didn’t think it worked, but because of information security concerns. I’ve spent enough time writing code across different languages and environments to…

Hidden Data Risks When Recycling Old PCs

September 27, 2025 Attitude High Level Tech Intro Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

Besides the obvious risk posed by an old 3.5 inch hard drive, there are several easy to miss ways that retired computers can leak sensitive information. These mistakes can expose intellectual property, customer records, or employee data to the public, or worse, to competitors. The resulting spear phishing attacks…

ChatGPT Coding – I Did It, and Have No Regrets

August 30, 2024 Attitude High Level Tech Intro Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

I first learned to program in the 6th grade. Since then I’ve spent time as an IT Engineer and System Architect. Prior to joining Cisco, I worked with Perl, shell scripting, Aspect, Expect, Tcl/Tk and a few others I’ve forgotten. We started with Perl when I was at Cisco, then…

In the IoT Space, Is It a Microcontroller or What?

April 23, 2024 Creative Projects High Level Tech Intro Random Notes Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

I’m working on an introductory article related to building IoT devices. With that I’m trying to use simpler and non-threatening language that is reasonably accurate. Since I’ll be referencing some common open source hardware as a way of getting started learning, I’m having a hard time with how to classify…

Getting Started Learning Programming

October 30, 2023 High Level Tech Intro SE Skills Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

HelloWorld() Several recent articles have listed Programming as a top skill to learn. Even if you don’t intend it as a career, there are many advantages to at least a BASIC* (pun intended) understanding of it. As someone who learned to program in elementary school, I’ve seen the lifelong benefits…

Learning to Program and Interact with Hardware – and Perhaps Building That Minimally Viable Product

March 31, 2023 High Level Tech Intro Raspberry Pi Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

Want to learn to program? Combine that with learning electronics? Perhaps your goal is to get hired or get promoted. Maybe so you can build an MVP (Minimally Viable Product) with which to get funding or attract a startup team? Let me tell you about an inexpensive circuit board…

Eric Burns Online

Category: Technical Tutorials & Developer Education