About

Constant Variable carries its philosophy in its name. In code, a constant never changes and a variable never sits still — you cannot be both, yet every piece of software has to be: stable enough to trust, alive enough to matter. The only constant is change. The name is a reminder to build accordingly.

The umbrella

I founded Constant Variable in September 2011 in Winter Park, Florida, as an umbrella for side projects and client work — the earlier work era. It gave a name to whatever I was making at the time, and asked nothing more of me.

The incarnation

Today I want Constant Variable to be more deliberate: the working incarnation of my design and engineering philosophy. The through-line of everything under it is the same move — take something that never stops changing and give it a constant, human-readable frame. A changelog format that outlives any single project. A badge language that stays legible while the data underneath it churns. A way to read a patch of land before planting something meant to last.

That philosophy applies differently depending on where you build, and this site will grow essays on both modes.

In the open — OSS and InnerSource

Open source taught me that conventions beat enforcement: a good format or spec spreads because it respects the people using it, not because anyone was forced. Communicating change — honestly, legibly, for humans — is the whole game. InnerSource brings those same habits inside company walls: working in the open internally, documenting decisions where colleagues can find them, treating every team as a downstream consumer you owe a changelog.

In private — product teams and startups

Fully private, independent projects — the kind you build on product teams and at startups — run on the same philosophy under different pressure. You still owe people a legible account of change; the audience is just closer: your teammates, your future self, your users reading release notes. Shipping beats polishing, but shipping without communicating is half the job. Constants here are the interfaces, promises, and conventions you keep; variables are everything you let move fast around them.

If any of this resonates, the blog is where it unfolds.