First Principles Thinking

First principles thinking means refusing to treat existing abstractions as explanations. Instead of accepting that something works, you ask why it works — tracing back to the underlying mechanisms until you reach something that can’t be reduced further.

Applied to software, it changes how you read a system. A protocol stops being a black box and becomes a set of OS primitives, a wire format, and an agreed-upon handshake. An abstraction stops being magic and becomes a specific trade-off someone made for specific reasons. The question isn’t “how do I use this” but “what is this actually doing.”

The posts here apply that lens to technology — protocols, tools, systems, and ideas that are easier to use once you understand them from the bottom up.