Why hello there.

I’m a Chicago software engineer who loves to move fast and (Usually) fix things…

What 50 First Dates can teach us about LLM memory

You’ve been there. You and your AI coding buddy are in the zone. It’s feeding you perfect snippets of code, it understands your weirdly named variables, it’s practically reading your mind. You’ve built half a dozen functions, and the project is humming along. Then you close the window. You come back an hour later, open a new chat, and ask it to build the next piece of the puzzle. The AI stares back at you with the digital equivalent of a blank expression. It has no idea what your project is, what a user_auth_service is, or why you keep muttering about the global_config.json. It has, for all intents and purposes, become incredibly dumb. ...

August 2, 2025 · 5 min · 899 words · Zac Orndorff<https://orndorff.dev>

When Docker Says 'not found' But ls Says 'it's right there': A glibc/musl Comedy of Errors

You know that moment when your computer is gaslighting you? When you run ls inside a Docker container, see your executable sitting there with perfect permissions, but when you try to run it, the shell just shrugs and says “not found”? Welcome to my Saturday morning. The Setup: A Simple Go + TailwindCSS Build I was working on a straightforward Dockerfile for a Go web app that uses TailwindCSS. Nothing fancy—just download the tailwindcss binary, make it executable, run it to process some CSS, and move on with life. ...

July 12, 2025 · 3 min · 500 words · Zac Orndorff<https://orndorff.dev>

The Factory Must Grow... And So Must Your Engineering Intuition

Factorio is more than a game; it’s a powerful tool for training your engineering intuition. Discover how it mirrors the challenges of software development and why you should be playing it.

April 21, 2025 · 9 min · 1728 words · Zac Orndorff<https://orndorff.dev>

Rethinking AI in Education: Veritasium and Cognitive Science

My Notes after watching Derek Muller’s talk on AI in education. As someone working in EdTech, especially focusing on what we can do with LLMs, you hear it constantly: AI is going to “revolutionize” education. Personalized tutors, instant feedback, access like never before – the whole pitch. But I caught a talk recently by Derek Muller – you know, the Veritasium guy – and he offered this really grounded take that hit home for me. It’s making me rethink the hype and actually consider the cognitive science underneath it all. ...

April 15, 2025 · 4 min · 709 words · Zac Orndorff<https://orndorff.dev>

The Zen of Vibe-Driven Testing: Why Your Unit Tests Should Just Chill, Man

Jokes follow… Please don’t yeet code with assert(true) into production based on this article. In the high-pressure world of software development, we’ve all been doing it wrong. Forget test-driven development. Forget behavior-driven development. It’s time to embrace the revolutionary approach of vibe-driven testing. Let me introduce you to the enlightened path: unit tests that consist exclusively of assert(true). This groundbreaking methodology guarantees 100% test coverage with minimal effort. Here’s why you should join the movement: ...

March 29, 2025 · 2 min · 390 words · Zac Orndorff<https://orndorff.dev>