Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Human DevOps - 28th April 2024 - Bad Week, Good Week
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When you turn up to work you have a choice. Your choice is to enjoy the work that's put in front of you or to fight the work. If you fight the work, then be sure you're up to the fight. Some weeks, you're just not in the shape to do the fight, so then leave it. Here's the always-interesting John Cutler talking to Hazel Weakly about software engineering. My favourite quote from Hazel: "Local choices move everything forward in the right direction. Can I give [people] the ability to make decisions [so] that I don't even have to check in with them? [..] That is true multiplication of not just the force, but of the system's synergy." Let's construct a future where we don't need to fight the work. -- Richard Don’t Overthink ItPublished on April 28, 2024 There is a lot of talk about programming. There is also a lot of talk about improving the craft of programming through architecture, TDD, DDD, Agile, pairing, or any host of frameworks or protocols for improving our practice. We can discuss engineering vs. programming. Automation and DevOps as methods that impose feedback mechanisms to improve… Read More »Don’t Overthink It
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The Human Software
Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Writers are terribly impatient. We are so fragile, we crave attention all the time. So, for us, writing into a vacuum and not getting anything back is the worst. We will happily take anything including "wow, it really sucked" or "how could you be so old and so feeble at writing?" At this point in the journey of Human Software, I'm so desperate for feedback, I'm even willing to pay for it! So that's what I did. In January, I hired an editor, and he's been great. He helped me with the...
Over the last week, I drew a map of Kent reimagined as if the 1286/7 floods hadn't happened. According to the history books, those large storms and tidal events significantly changed the coastline of eastern England. The former Wantsum Channel became blocked with alluvial mud and sand, turning the once important seaport of Sandwich into a landlocked town too far away from the sea to accept large boats. Further afield Dunwich in Suffolk suffered a similar fate: In the Anglo-Saxon period,...
Three years ago, I started a podcast without much idea of its future. Before that, I'd started writing, wandering through automation, programming techniques, infrastructure, DevOps, and thoughts about management, leadership, and how companies are organised. Where was I going? While I'd read a few books, it was clear that I was searching for something. Was I just talking for the sake of it? It sometimes certainly seemed that way. And then, about eighteen months ago, I started writing a novel....