Building fast is solved.Deciding well is not.

Robert Blust · Software Engineer & Architect

My work keeps returning to one idea: the constraint has moved from building fast to deciding well, which makes describing a domain precisely matter more than coding it quickly. Over twenty-five years of platforms behind that — sixteen at UBS, then co-founding 3AP and LIKE MAGIC.

The vision

One model, true everywhere.

Whoever asks about my work — a person, a search engine, an agent — reaches the same answer, because every surface they can reach derives from one model I keep, and no claim in it stands without its evidence.

See the modelThe whole graph: experiences, skills and the evidence each claim rests on.Open the model → Read the timelineOver twenty-five years, in the order they began, and what ran during what.Open the timeline →

What I hold to

Five values, each with the thing I never do.

Build the alternative before making the pointI never let a complaint stand as a position. Decide well over build fastI never ship a feature in a day and argue about it for a quarter because nobody can say what it was for. Grow the people with the platformI never let five people know everything while twenty wait for them. Model it before you build itI never let the model live in three heads and a slide deck, with every system encoding a slightly different version of it. Production is the finish lineI never meet a launch date with a system nobody is on call for.

Latest writing

One question answered. One still open. 5 min On the ideas page I asked two questions of my two ideas. Fifteen weeks later, the first has an answer with a number. The second has a test, and the test has not been passed yet.

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What I am building now

Two ideas have come out of that work, and I am building both in the open — GuestGraph and CompanyGraph. Right now I am on a deliberate career break: creative, inspiring and the reason the two get built properly and validated in public rather than in the evenings.

See the ideas