IThe Sheet

Tommy Long’s contribution record, January 2022 to today, drawn as a survey. Each column is a week and each cell a day. The more contributions, the higher the ground, and a day under five is sea.

IIThe Surveyor

Tommy Long, software engineer, London. Building software since 2008; at present Technical Lead at Equals Money, a UK fintech, across five product domains, and chair of its AI Centre of Excellence. The essays are in the Journal beside this book.

IIIConventional Signs

Relief

Contoura step in contributions
Index contour, figuredcontributions a day
Spot heightthe day’s count
Hachureswhere the count changes fast
Land tintsby contributions a day

Water

Seathe quiet days; its arms are the weekends

Land

Strip fieldsworking ground, a strip to each week
Woodlandthe flat high ground
Dry-stone wallthe steepest breaks
Settlementssteady weeks, from barn to village

Occasions

Landing in a named baya holiday
House on a named sounda week or more away
Track off the foot of the columna work trip
Trig pointa planning day or conference
Marsha bank holiday
Bench mark, numberedan essay in the Journal
Marker horizonan AI model released
Unsurveyedthe months to come

Drawn from the record each night at the Surveyor’s Office, London. Set in Sorts Mill Goudy, Petrona and Archivo Narrow. The ground, the water and the lettering are drawn by hand in the browser, and the light falling on them is London’s, at the hour of reading.

memorandum

Tommy Long

A survey of the works of Tommy Long.

The survey is a map on a desk, drawn for a laptop or a desktop. Its essays are here:

XII — It Wasn't a Slack Bot 24 June 2026
XI — Execution Was Never the Moat 16 June 2026
X — The Step Down 5 June 2026
IX — Discourse Theatre 25 May 2026
VIII — First, Principals 19 May 2026
VII — The Workaround 9 May 2026
VI — The Myth of Non-Determinism 18 April 2026
V — Three Months Without Code 9 April 2026
IV — The New Programming Language 26 March 2026
III — Where Engineering Leverage Goes Next 10 March 2026
II — The Pin Factory, The Copilot and The Agent 31 January 2026
I — Less Is More: Claude Code’s Advantage Over Cursor 10 January 2026