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eddiehinkle.comWashington, DC MetroEst. 2015

I write things down.

Eddie Hinkle — partner to Charlie, father to three, engineer of interfaces in the Washington, DC metro area. I’ve been keeping a record at this address since 2015, and writing on the web for a lot longer than that.

Recent writing

All writing
  1. The Product Delivery Paradox: the framework to help engineers simplify estimates and trade offs.

    Product delivery is simple and complex, all at the same time. The issue is that we always want 3 dimensions of delivery. We want it: Quickly, Bug-free, All the "important" features. The problem is that you can only deliver on 2 of the 3 at the same time.

  2. Most software engineers start by thinking about the code. Instead, start with the why so you solve the right problem the first time.

    Every software engineer has that moment. You are assigned a feature requirement. It could be a Jira ticket or a sticky note. You first start brainstorming if this is possible, how you would achieve it, and how much time it might take. But before you start thinking through the technical implementation, you need to step back and ask "why"?

  3. How does this continuous learning thing work?

    So here's the thing, no matter how you learned software development, either in a degree program, through self-reaching, or by using a bootcamp-style program; one big risk is that what you learned yesterday isn't necessarily going to help you tomorrow.

  4. Creating auto-complete types without restricting values in TypeScript

    Our library is in TypeScript and we wanted to provide IDE suggestions for the values of a parameter, but we couldn't actually restrict the value of that parameter. This is because 90% of the time, the value would be a couple of obvious values, however the other 10% of the time, we had no way to predict what the value would be!

  5. How to make a plan for your career

    You can let your career be blown around by the winds of happenstance or you can set a course toward the island of your dreams. I wish I had planned out my career earlier.

Now

  • I manage engineering at Indeed across both the front end and the back end, currently leading a full rearchitecture of our notifications system — moving it away from volume as the lever for engagement and toward notifications that are timely and relevant to what each user actually needs. It is the same UX instinct I have always brought to interfaces, now applied to the notification itself.
  • Nights and weekends I run Syntax Labs, a one-person iOS studio, where I am building a journal called Daily and two apps for my own children.
  • I write fiction when there is time, which there usually is not.

Selected work

Full history

  • Syntax Labs

    2025 —

    A one-person software studio in the DC metro area. Daily, a family memory journal built around one line a day; Key Quest, a typing game for children; Dex Companion, a reference app. Nothing shipped yet, on purpose.

  • IndieWebKit

    2018 — 2019

    A Swift package implementing IndieAuth, Micropub and Microsub. The most used thing I have written, and the foundation under Indigenous.

  • Indigenous

    2017 — 2019

    An IndieWeb client for iOS, shipped in 2018 under Studio H, LLC. Free and donation-funded. I handed it to a new maintainer in 2019; it ran on as IndiePass until 2026.

  • Abode

    2017 — 2020

    The Micropub and Microsub server that ran this website for years, and the source of the eighteen thousand posts in its archive.

  • World Surf Engine

    2007 — 2008

    A start-up I co-founded, and the earliest thing on this page.