Blog Archives

A discussion on whether Swift was inevitable and whether it has achieved its goals, motivated by @tolmasky’s discussion with @lorenb on the Thoughts on Flash letter. Along the way I talk about Apple’s strategic investment into Java: I’ve discussed that … Continue reading →

In which I discuss the thorny issue of whether software engineering should be a licensed profession, mostly from the perspective of the ACM’s argument against it. Also considered is how, or even if, the whole Software Engineering Body of Knowledge … Continue reading →

As if you couldn’t guess, the topic is that software engineers should attend more meetings. I talk about the Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule idea, why it’s a false dichotomy, and why programmers can actually get to more meetings than they … Continue reading →

In which we recommend deleting your code. Steve McConnell’s More Effective Agile Ward Cunningham introduces the debt metaphor for bad code, and my guess is it won’t be familiar as he presented it if you think you’re familiar with the … Continue reading →

In which I admit to having used a very large number of Apple computers, even if I exclude vintage pieces. But actually talk about setting up a second one. The Twitter poll that started it all.

Carrying on from Episode 16, I wonder whether it matters that Apple switch to RISC-V next decade anyway. Sophie Wilson’s talk on the future of microprocessors Huang’s Law, saying that GPUs are improving at machine learning applications faster than CPUs … Continue reading →

In this episode I predict Apple’s transition to the RISC-V CPU architecture. "[Clive Sinclair] was an irascible man who was always charging up and down shouting and throwing his slide rule around" BBC Micro Men, on Sinclair and Chris Curry’s … Continue reading →

In this episode, I work out how to use a computer to store and operate on numbers. I think it could catch on. I got the descriptions of endianness the wrong way around! When I talk about the order of … Continue reading →