Writing
Essays + field notes
Long-form on engineering leadership, agentic coding, healthtech, and the African tech diaspora. New writing lives on Medium, Substack, and dev.to. The 16-year WordPress archive is preserved at /archive/.
Where I publish
Medium Long-form essays on engineering leadership, AI-assisted coding, and the African tech diaspora. medium.com → Substack Newsletter — slower, more personal essays. aboukone.substack.com → dev.to Technical posts, side-project write-ups, and code samples. dev.to → LinkedIn LinkedIn articles — operator-audience pieces on engineering leadership. linkedin.com → daily.dev Daily reading + sharing across the developer feed. app.daily.dev →
Recent essays
2026-02-16 DEV.TO I Built a Personality Test for Vibe Coding Vibe Coding Profiler reads Git metadata to surface how a developer approaches AI-assisted coding across six behavioral dimensions. 2026-02-02 MEDIUM My Review of AI Coding IDEs: Real-World Impressions Hands-on take on Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and friends — what actually fits a regulated production stack. 2026-01-19 SUBSTACK How procrastinating helped me ship a new AI-assisted writing platform The story behind shipping Sabati: an AI-assisted writing app built around prompts, not auto-completion, born of a procrastination habit. 2025-12-08 MEDIUM Coding with AI: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Where AI-assisted coding accelerates a senior engineer, where it backfires, and where it just looks impressive in demos. 2025-12-01 MEDIUM Thoughts and Lessons From Interviewing for an Engineering Leadership Role Field notes from a senior engineering-leadership job search: signal vs. noise, what changed in the last cycle, what to push back on.
Africa, kept from the archive
Selected long-form posts from 2012 to 2016 about West African tech ecosystems. Preserved verbatim. Context and conclusions are of their time.
2020-04-01 ARCHIVE Angular Testability: Dealing with Selenium or Protractor timeouts Running automated integration tests is a crucial element for any serious CI/CD pipeline and within our company, our QA uses Selenium for that purpose. Angular offers Protractor for 2020-02-24 ARCHIVE A day in the life: how a frontend developer solves a “simple” bug I have been working lately with junior front end developers, as well as mentoring aspiring developers and one of the questions that they ask me is how to become a better/senior dev 2019-01-21 ARCHIVE Autoplaying inline videos on iPhone iOS 10 using Angular Starting with iOS 10, Safari on mobile (iPhone and iPad) started allowing developers to autoplay videos inline provided the video you are trying to play meets certain conditions. B 2018-09-23 ARCHIVE Integrating OpenCV.js with an Angular application OpenCV (Open Source Computer Vision Library) is an open source computer vision and machine learning software library. It was originally written in C++ and has since been ported to 2017-07-27 ARCHIVE Going Mobile: Wrapping an existing web application in Cordova/Phonegap Going Mobile: Wrapping an existing web application in Cordova/Phonegap There are many choices to build mobile applications, from native to the growing popularity of hybrid developm 2016-10-21 ARCHIVE Understanding the developer ecosystem in West Africa Part II Disclaimer: This is an opinion based on my experience, observations and interactions in the developer ecosystem in West Africa, more specifically Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire. In my p 2016-10-15 ARCHIVE Understanding the developer ecosystem in West Africa Part I Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to give scientific result based on accurate polling or any kind of scientific method (outside of observation). This is just a summary of my observations 2014-07-29 ARCHIVE Discussing Coders4Africa and its Cote d’Ivoire chapter opening 2013-03-26 ARCHIVE 10 Tips for Designing Mobile APIs 10 Tips for Designing Mobile APIs – http://pulse.me/s/jVMoD 2013-03-24 ARCHIVE African tech startups raise $1 million in crowdfunding effort African tech startups raise $1 million in crowdfunding effort – http://pulse.me/s/jLEmh 2013-03-15 ARCHIVE African YouTube use grows 90 per cent African YouTube use grows 90 per cent – http://pulse.me/s/jzrg1 2013-03-15 ARCHIVE Interview: The man behind Nigeria’s answer to the iPad Interview: The man behind Nigeria’s answer to the iPad – http://pulse.me/s/jyYBr 2012-12-11 ARCHIVE Africa on the Rise Africa on the Rise – http://pulse.me/s/fYemS 2012-11-05 ARCHIVE Africa Gathering 2012 – The Wrap-Up Africa Gathering 2012 was held this year at the ICC Auditorium on the campus of Georgetown University and was hosted by the African Society of Georgetown. . The lineup was excellen 2012-11-01 ARCHIVE Africa Gathering 2013 in Washington DC It’s back in DC this year for the 2013 edition and it’s an event you don’t want to miss if you are interested in keeping up with what’s hot and relevant about the emerging Africa; 2012-08-11 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of August 12th 2012 As usual don’t forget to check out the podcast of the African Tech Weekly over at Coders4Africa Radio. We are now available on iTunes and soon in the Zune store. If you are doing s 2012-08-03 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of August 5th 2012 Here are your tidbits for this week.Enjoy! VC4Africa does a feature on Maliyo Games, an interesting company based in Nigeria who produces games based on the “representation of the 2012-07-28 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of July 29th 2012 So what’s new in African Tech News? A bunch of interesting tidbits as usual. But before that, I need you to take some time and head over to Start Some Good and support the 30 Coder 2012-07-21 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of July 22nd 2012 Welcome back to another edition! Don’t forget that we still need your help with training the next batch of African Software Engineers. And in Sunday’s African Tech Weekly, we will 2012-07-15 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of July 15th 2012 On this week’s African Tech Weekly show we will be discussing the exciting new Coders4Africa social campaign aimed at training 30 African programmers from September to December 201 2012-07-08 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits: Week of July 8th 2012 The sister program to the African Tech News Tidbits is now live. The African Tech Weekly on Coders4Africa Radio will, as previously announced be broadcast every Sunday at 1:00PM Ea 2012-06-28 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of June 28th 2012 As some of you may already know, last week’s edition of the Coders4Africa Radio show was cancelled due to a quite ironic power outage at the studio in Maryland but everything is ba 2012-06-20 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits: Week of June 20th 2012 This week’s African tech news are again full of interesting tidbits. Don’t forget to join me on Sunday June 24th for the first edition of Technofrique on Coders4Africa Radio. I wil 2012-06-13 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits – Week of June 13th 2012 Here are your African Tech News Tidbits for this week. You can follow them on Twitter using #atntidbits and you will soon find them in Audio version on the Coders4AfricaRadio show 2012-06-10 ARCHIVE The first people using your product are an amazing breed The first people using your product are an amazing breed – http://pulse.me/s/a8S0l 2012-06-09 ARCHIVE The African Tech News Tidbits Week of June 7th How are we all doing? Here are your ATN Tidbits for this week. By the way, I hope to count you as one of our listeners in my new weekly radio show at Coders4Africa Radio starting J 2012-05-29 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits: Week of May 30th It’s been a month since the last iteration so there is a lot to go over. Let’s not then waste time: This right here is absolutely cool, straight: Teaching algorithms through kente 2012-05-27 ARCHIVE The top 5 startup trends in Africa From VC4Africa, an interesting look at the top 5 startup trends in Africa – http://pulse.me/s/9GHO5 2012-05-24 ARCHIVE Africa developing its first supercomputer outside South Africa Africa developing its first supercomputer outside South Africa – http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/1AzBcz59CMw/ 2012-05-24 ARCHIVE Ernst & Young’s West Africa Entrepreneur Awards opens for local Ghanaians entrepreneurs | Business http://business.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201205/87173.php 2012-04-24 ARCHIVE The Africa Tech News Tidbits: Week of April 25th Here is what has been happening in the world of African Tech this week: An interview with Jason Njoku, founder of IrokoTV, known as the “netflix of Africa”. Some good insight in a 2012-04-18 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits: Week of April 17th A lot happening and since my schedule cleared up a bit, let’s do a quick round of what’s been happening in the world of AfricaTech. First, this is a must read by Prof. Chukwuma Cha 2012-04-11 ARCHIVE Kenyan startups: As real businesses or social impact projects? In an interesting reflection, Dinfin Mulupi over at HowWeMadeItInAfrica brings up a worry from investors in Kenya that the emphasis on social impact technology is distracting entre 2012-04-10 ARCHIVE African Tech News Tidbits: Week of April 10th Back for another session of ATNT, and I got some good reads for you. This week the topics covered include disruptive technology in an African context, startups raising funds, hacka 2012-04-09 ARCHIVE Social Entrepreneurship: Make a difference In a guest post at Venture Beat, David Gorodyansky, CEO of AnchorFree, which makes Hotspot Shield, a privacy shield for internet users around the world dicusses examples of entrepr 2012-03-26 ARCHIVE Africa Tech News Tidbits: Week of March 25th Here we are back again. Another round of African Tech news you might have missed over the past couple of weeks: Forbes has an interview with Magatte Wade, a young senegalese woman 2012-03-09 ARCHIVE A list of West African brilliant startups? Memeburn just compiled a list of 30 African startups and it’s an inspiration to see the list of business models and technologies at play. The startup scene in Africa is definitely 2012-03-07 ARCHIVE Africa Tech News Tidbits, Week of March 5 Back at it, after taking a little break due to a busy work schedule, let’s see what’s been happening in African Tech: In Cameroon, a young entrepreneur just released the Cardiopad, 2012-03-07 ARCHIVE Cardiopad: A Cameroonian Medical Tablet Arthur Zang is a 24 year old Cameroonian who just came up with the country’s first medical tablet, the CardioPad, which is aimed at helping diagnose heart patients. Zang explains t 2012-02-27 ARCHIVE E-Learning Africa 2012 to happen in Benin Tech Event of note on the continent: eLearning Africa is the continent’s largest gathering of high-level policy makers, decision makers and practitioners from education,business an 2012-02-27 ARCHIVE Lessons in unsuccessful African startup creation In a blog entry, developer Pascal Ehitie Aito from Nigeria shares some insight in the best ways not to create a successful startup. It is funny and definitely makes sense. Highligh 2012-02-16 ARCHIVE African Tech Tidbits: Week of February 13th 2012 It’s the middle of the week, I’ve been busy with life and wanted to post a few articles but never got time, so decided to start a new, hopefully weekly series of articles aggregati 2012-01-27 ARCHIVE E-Book: App Design help for design-averse developers from Afriapps Afriapps developer Andrew Mugoya is back at it again with a new book offering some designing help to app developers. Titled “Help! I am a developer with no clue about design”, the 2012-01-25 ARCHIVE Website design rules for the African market Will Mutua at Afrinnovator writes an interesting article on how to design websites for the African market and supports it with some facts on the ground. Looking at the examples of 2012-01-18 ARCHIVE Kenyan startup Mocality Vs Google It’s kind of interesting, and not frequent to have a mini-scandal going in the African technology scene and the latest one involves Mocality, a Kenyan mobile business directory sta 2011-12-25 ARCHIVE A new African middle class http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/25/africas-middle-class-hope-continent?cat=world&type=article 2011-12-19 ARCHIVE “Driving a Rolls Royce on a dirt road”: How not to create African software Herman Chinery-Hesse is Ghanian and runs SOFTtribe, one of Africa’s largest software companies, and he is not a happy camper. In a must read interview with Kernel Mag if you are in 2011-12-19 ARCHIVE West Africa and the push for E-Government Slowly but surely, West African countries are following the lead set in East Africa in pushing E-Government. In Ivory Coast, a seminar was held last week (December 14th to the 18th 2011-12-13 ARCHIVE E-Book: African Apps in The Global Marketplace I ran into this e-book totally by mistake, but nothing happens by coincidence in my book so here you go. It’s an e-book by Andrew Mugoya and you can download it from here on the Af 2011-12-13 ARCHIVE Have you heard about Konza City? When it comes to ICTs, Kenya has demonstrated that it is deservedly one of the leaders in the new Africa. I was recently directed to learn about Konza City by Amadou Daffe of Coder 2011-12-12 ARCHIVE Mobile: Comparative View Between Kenya and South Africa. I’d like to direct you to this article by Mariska Du Preez titled “Mobile Technology: a comparative view between Kenya and South Africa“. Some hard numbers are given from research 2011-12-08 ARCHIVE African Mobile Tablets: A Reality I ran into this recent article from the sharp African Tech Evangelist Robert Alai discussing the topic of African tablets with Professor Ndubuisi Ekekwe, an inventor who holds a pa 2011-12-07 ARCHIVE .africa Domain Name? Soon Come… Get ready people, you might be able to snatch a .africa domain name by 2013, as the ICANN is currently accepting applications for new generic top level domains and many organizatio 2011-12-07 ARCHIVE Meet Ingenious Labs, mobile and web development startup in Togo Head over to one of my favorite African related site on the net to check an interview with Togolese entrepreneur and developer Tiyab Konlambigue who created Nomad, an Android app “ 2011-12-07 ARCHIVE Mobile App Highlight: Dropifi from Ghana From VC4Africa, the winners of the recent Startup Weekend in Accra with their app Dropifi (not be confused with this Dropify, or this one for that matter): “Dropifi is a messaging 2011-12-06 ARCHIVE An overview of the App and Mobile Market in Africa Two good reads for you about the mobile market in Africa today. First we start with “The Numbers That Lure Telecom Firms to Africa”, good nuggets in the stats cited there, let’s se 2011-12-06 ARCHIVE System D or how informal economy profits the mobile market The website How We Made it in Africa is a must read if you want to keep tracks of tech and other interesting news that are happening in Africa and would otherwise fly under the rad 2011-12-02 ARCHIVE U-Mo another mobile money solution in Nigeria According to Nigeria’s Business Day, another mobile money solution has been launched, directly competing with Paga, the startup i wrote about earlier. Dubbed U-Mo, this initiative 2011-11-30 ARCHIVE Lion’s Lair, A $1500 Youth Entrepreneurship Contest by MakingAfricaWork Making Africa Work is an international social enterprise dedicated to building the capacity of entrepreneurial young Africans and Canadians to create sustainable wealth and employm 2011-11-30 ARCHIVE Paga: A mobile payment startup in Nigeria I recently ran into this interesting article from Forbes highlighting Paga a Nigerian money transfer service startup. Paga launched in 2009 and has a current user base of 32000 use 2011-11-30 ARCHIVE “Why Africa May Never Produce a Facebook” – A Valid Argument? I came up on this article by Mfonobong Nsehe who also wrote the article that inspired my previous blog post and it created a good Facebook conversation with a couple of friends of 2011-11-15 ARCHIVE Self Starters: Disruptive Entrepreneurs at DCWEEK 2011 Core Conference The Disruptive Entrepreneur session was one of the sessions outside of the Mobile track at the DCWEEK Core Conference that I attended because it caught my interest (Music & Politic 2011-11-06 ARCHIVE Africa Gathering Washington DC Wrapup So I was off to my first event of the Digital Capital Week or better known as DCWEEK this Saturday morning and made it with a thirty minutes delay to the Kenny Auditorium at the SA