Phil Sturgeon

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Phil Sturgeon

Phil Sturgeon

Software Engineer gone ferril. Digital nomad since 2018 (bike/van). Now dedicated to woodland creation and restoration, as co-founder of UK climate chairty Protect Earth.

Elm City CX 2017: One Whole Season “Intact”!

Elm City CX 2017: One Whole Season “Intact”!

Last year, Elm City was my first cross race. It was the last of the season, and that was no coincidence. I was desperately waiting for my broken ankle to heal up, and by mid December it was close enough for me to give cross a try. Elm City CX

A Response to REST is the new SOAP

Enough people have asked me about the article REST is the new SOAP that I felt it justifies a write up. Before I get started, I want to be clear that I hold no grudge against the author, and if any frustration leaks out in my writing I'd

Bubblecross 2017

Bubblecross is a fantastic course in a park, literally passing through a swing set, two sand pits and then sneaking up through some awesome single track. It’s got the usual tricky turny grass stuff you’d expect, but the rooty steep climbs and rock dodging presents a challenge for

Flying to Colombia with Not a Bike Bag

Flying to Colombia with Not a Bike Bag

Traveling to major cities, figuring out the taxi/train/bus to and from the airport, then bumbling about yet another globalized concrete jungle is usually not the experience we hope for when we dream of exploring the world. To really get a feel for a city, you want to get

A Happy Compromise Between Customization and Cacheability

With endpoint-based APIs (REST, RESTish, SOAP, RPC, AJAX-ish junk, etc.) you get to choose if you want increased likelihood of network cache hits, or the ability to slim down the response. The two goals are mutually exclusive. Slimming responses can be achieved with concepts like sparse fieldsets (tl:dr; send

Chasing the Perfect API Specification Workflow

Documentation is a nice thing to have, but it is often treated as optional or superfluous, especially in teams where the clients and servers are managed by the same people. Here the code is considered the contract, so why define it again in documentation? Certainly, with all the tooling around,

Representing State in REST and GraphQL

Representing state is a complex thing. At my last two jobs, it's been very common for APIs to be treated like "databases over HTTP". The fields are sent up and down from the server to multiple mobile/web apps, and there's not too much