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.
The Human DevOps - Sunday 10th November - Being Human
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The period after the summer holiday is always a busy one. What have you been up to? A lot of what has been on my mind is my mind. And not only my mind but the minds of those around me. There is an increasing neurodivergent component in my family, so for me, it's been really hard to think or read or write about anything else! Against this backdrop, I've been back to working as a DevOps engineer, writing Terraform, Python and Ansible and having design discussions. While I still enjoy it, I sometimes wish for more exciting work. The people I work with are great, making it bearable for the moment but there is still uncertainty in our futures. There is still a lot of uncertainty in the software world. Layoffs continue. I count myself lucky. It's better to have a job than not one, especially at this time of year. I've also been continuing to work on my novel, Human Software. It's also a blog now where I write about the writing process and track its development. With this focus on writing, on the self, family and the team, I find the actual creation of software itself increasingly unimportant. Consequently, I'm reconsidering this newsletter, my blog and what it means to my readers. My focus is exploring the human condition in the current time - in 2024. It's never been about software processes or engineering excellence but I have been writing about "what I know" so I've been expressing myself through that medium. I look back over the last almost three years of this newsletter, and I notice that it's changed a lot as I have changed and learned. I was initially writing about automation and how that helps us. Then, I thought I was writing about software design, DevOps and architecture. Then, I thought it was about the management process and how our organisations are built. But, all along, I was talking about people, about humans. About how we interact. About what we think. About how we grow. About how we love. These are all themes I am exploring in Human Software. So if you want to know what's going on with that - you can also one-click sign up for updates! An update about Human Software is scheduled for this afternoon. Thanks! When I return with the next instalment of this newsletter, I might have dropped the DevOps part from the name ;) Have a great Sunday! Self-Compassion on the Anxiety Boredom ThresholdPublished on November 2, 2024 Alongside my day job I’ve been making a concerted albeit slightly haphazard effort to build a consulting career over the last few years. This means having a blog (hi!), having an increasingly occasional newsletter, starting a podcast, posting on LinkedIn, making connections, reading books, reviewing them and being an enabled and activated member of a… Read More »Self-Compassion on the Anxiety Boredom Threshold
Humans Screw Up. Why Can’t Other Humans Accept This?Published on October 22, 2024 Do you know how many mistakes the average software engineer makes over their career? It’s a lot. In fact, it’s directly proportional to the number of things a software engineer does. The more you do, the more you screw up. That’s how it works. Pretending that somehow we are invincible as software engineers is just… Read More »Humans Screw Up. Why Can’t Other Humans Accept This?
Why I still love LegacyPublished on October 9, 2024 Almost three years ago I started a podcast without really knowing where it was going. The only thing I knew was that it was good to talk about things – to talk out loud about ideas. Because when we give voice to our ideas, they actually become real. They are not just banging around inside… Read More »Why I still love Legacy
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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.
Aside from being a writer, I'm also an avid film and TV watcher. This week we were blessed by the arrival of Pluribus on AppleTV. It's a speculative science fiction series written by Vince Gilligan, co-creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He's someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to writing, producing and directing these incredibly successful series. More than that though, he picks the best people and directs them with ease. Here's a bit on when Vince Gilligan knew...
Greg Wilson of Software Carpentry fame knows how to write a headline. His recent talk Cocaine and Conway's Law is a mine of brilliant ideas and books to add to your reading list. They talk invested me immediately through his excoriation of Mark Andreessen's "Techno Optimist Manifesto" as a part of the Peter Thiel/Elon Musk narrative - work harder and longer, fix all problems via tech. Conway's Law, for those who are unfamiliar is the implicit link between social organisation of a company and...
The Horizon Post Office Scandal is one of the biggest IT failures in recent times, directly responsible for thirteen of the wrongly accused taking their own lives after prosecutions were brought against them. There is a highly technical deep dive into the findings made by Computer Weekly in this incredible Corecursive podcast episode. It is worth a detailed listen if you want to understand how this could come about and what systemic failings caused it to be covered up for so long. Software...