Thoughts on Software and Technology
It is modern to be data-driven. Organizations brag: “We make decisions based on data.” Having spent a decent amount of time building data-crunching systems, I have a lot of sympathy for this attitude. In fact, I have suggested data-driven approaches in previous articles. But I also think that the tendency to measure and quantify everything... Continue Reading →
Cutting up large systems into smaller components is one typical task of software architecture. Many modern architectures follow a (micro-) service pattern which is one particular family of strategies to decompose a larger system into smaller parts. It would be short-sighted to apply any such method without consideration of its respective strengths and weaknesses and... Continue Reading →
Estimation exercises that require the team to come around a table and discuss whether a task is a three or a five are a typical component of today’s software development rituals. Do the benefits of this process outweigh its cost? I have worked in teams with and without this process and I have found myself... Continue Reading →
For every hour your team spends at work, you have a choice to make: Do you spend it to add value to the product you are building, or do you spend it to improve your tools and processes that allow you to more rapidly deliver value later? This is one of the most fundamental dynamics... Continue Reading →
Office politics are one of these topics that no one wants to talk about. I’ve met people claiming that in their organization, politics do not exist. Others lament that politics are the root of all evil in their workplace. I think that politics are maybe sometimes unpleasant, especially when they negatively impact your work, but... Continue Reading →
I have talked about how software architecture design is a way of constraining the solution space for a project. Here is another angle on this: Any attempt to design a software architecture is an exercise in predicting the future. The usual way to make predictions is to extrapolate data from the past. This is based... 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 →
The Solution Space 