I am a programmer.

I think of the titles I've had over the course of my working life in tech. I've been a "programmer/analyst". I've been a "project leader/system specialist". I've been a "software developer", a "senior software developer", a "software engineer" a "senior software engineer" a "staff software engineer" and a "principal software engineer". And all of these …

Because Dijkstra…

If you've never read this, read it. I think it holds up brilliantly; I think even the changes within Java itself illustrate how well the argument has held up. Enjoy. To the Budget Council concerning Haskell

Diversity

Continuing a thought: As monocultures are brittle, diversity is to be seen as a positive. Unfortunately, it is too often the fact that the form of diversity that organizations look for is limited to "box checking" diversity, diversity based upon sex or gender identification, diversity based upon ancestry, diversity based upon whatever kinds of demographics …

Diversity

Monocultures are brittle. The rest is commentary.   (Yeah. That’s it. More later.)

Simple is Good

There's nothing like having to tell your story over and over to make you work on sharpening your rhetoric. Although the events that have led to this point are suboptimal, the opportunity -- erm, necessity -- to do some close editing of the tales I spin has been appreciated. I'm a folk mathematician at heart. …

Collaboration

Have you ever watched little kids at a park? The babies, being babies, barely take notice of one another; after all, they're new at all this, they're just figuring out how any of this works. The pre-toddlers, those crawling or just starting to walk, start to interact more. Soon they're playing with toys on the …

Code DEVO

Bad code starts out as good code that grows in bad ways. Let’s think about that one. When I originally wrote the line, I wrote “typically starts out…”. But I’m backing off from that. I will take the more optimistic approach. Code starts out good. Only after the addition of capabilities and features and whatever …

Kent Beck on Complexity and Stuff

This is an awfully good piece about complexity, cognitive load and how to deal with it.

Agility or Fast Waterfall?

An interesting piece in the Whats Agile and What Isn't space.

Teams and All That

"The construction of software is an essentially social activity typically performed by anti-social people." I don't know who said that first. I doubt it was me, but I'll take credit for it if no one else will. Or maybe I'll take the blame. After all, the construction that we who code are anti-social by nature …