Thoughts on Software and Technology
In the digital space, putting a price on non-physical goods has been a challenge at least since the rise of the internet. The market mechanisms of the physical world do not translate well because of one simple missing ingredient: Scarcity. A craftsman creating a table can easily put a price tag on that table because... Continue Reading →
Famously, engineers tend to make wrong assumptions about a lot of things: Names and time are two well-known examples. Maps are a rich source of edge cases. Especially when you start dealing with global maps, be prepared: That weird situation you assume does not exist? Somewhere in the world, it does. This article is part... Continue Reading →
In this article, I want to argue that the unique properties of map data make it a particularly interesting target for techniques such as change data capture in which not only the data itself but also the changes to the data become a first-class citizen. This article is part of a series about the specific... Continue Reading →
Like with any kind of data, to fully understand the map data design space, we need to understand both the way it is used from a consumer perspective and the way that it is produced. Understanding the different requirements of producers and consumers leads to a better understanding of the solution space and the design... Continue Reading →
It is well known that countries have diverging views on what their borders ought to look like. However, while working on digital maps, it was surprising to me to see just how much of a global map is up to interpretation. In the following, let us look at some examples of maps that are drawn... Continue Reading →
Map data is an interesting beast. Having worked on it for the last couple of years, I can note that many of the general data processing challenges arise. However, map data also comes with a number of particular features that set it apart. I have split this series into five parts: It's All About Relations.The... Continue Reading →
It may sound like an overly pessimistic assessment of the state of our industry. My intention is not to sound cynical, however, I think we need to be honest with young engineers entering the field of software development: There is a real possibility, that a lot of the code that you will write during your... Continue Reading →
I have a bit of a soft spot for legacy systems. They have a certain charming ugliness to them. Clearly, there is a ton of challenges with legacy projects, partly related to organizational incentives, and partly related to technical concerns. Sometimes the response to these challenges is: Let’s rewrite all of it. I think that... Continue Reading →
I have observed a pattern that companies large enough to develop internal tooling institutionalize a vocabulary that evokes the impression of a supplier-customer relationship between the teams building these internal tools and the teams using them. I would argue that saying “the customers request a feature” when talking about internal users does more harm than... Continue Reading →
I am a fan of setting stretch goals that are just a little bit beyond what seems realistically achievable. They are motivating and communicate a certain optimism about the capabilities of the team. However, not all dimensions of a project lend themselves to ambitious goal-setting. We should be particularly careful about goals that affect technical... Continue Reading →
The Solution Space 