APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: software-engineering
On association
My research touches on the professionalisation (or otherwise) of software engineering, and particularly the association (or not) of software engineers with a professional body, or with each other (or not) through a professional body. So what’s that about? In Engagement … Continue reading
On Scarcity
It’s called scarcity, and we can’t wait to see what you do with it. Let’s start with the important bit. I think that over the last year, with acceleration toward the end of the year, I have heard of over … Continue reading
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More detail on software requirements
My talk at AppDevCon discussed the Requirements Trifecta but turned it into a Quadrinella: you need leadership vision, market feedback, and technical reality to all line up as listed in the trifecta, but I’ve since added a fourth component. You … Continue reading
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Even more on generalist software engineering
There is a difference between a generalist software engineer, and a polyglot programmer. What is that difference, and why did I smoosh the two together in yesterday’s post? A polyglot programmer is a programmer who can use, or maybe has … Continue reading
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On interviewing and generalist software engineers
After publishing podcast Episode 53: Specialism versus generality, Alan Francis raised a good point: This could be very timely as I ponder my life as a generalist who has struggled when asked to fit in a neat box career wise. … Continue reading
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The Requirements Trifecta
It’s hard to argue that any one approach to, well, anything in software is better or worse than any others, because very few people are collecting any data and even fewer are reporting what they’re trying. Worst is understanding how … Continue reading
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On or Between
The new way to model concurrency is with coroutines (1963), i.e. the async/await dance or (building upon) call-with-concurrent-continuation. The new new way is with actors (1973), and the old and busted ways are with threads (1966), and promises (1976). As … Continue reading
Software design is refinement, not abstraction
James Koppel tells us that software engineers keep using the word “abstraction” and that he does not think it means what they think it means. I believe that he is correct, and that the confusion over the term abstraction comes … Continue reading
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Why are we like this?
The recent post on addressing “technical debt” did the rounds of the usual technology forums, where it raised a reasonable question: why are people basing these decisions on balancing engineering-led with customer-led tasks on opinion? Why don’t engineers take an … Continue reading
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Having the right data
In the beginning there was the relational database, and it was…OK, I guess. It was based on the relational model, and allowed operations that were within the relational algebra. I mean it actually didn’t. The usual standard for relational databases … Continue reading
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