Blog Archives

From my anosmic isolation chamber as I’ve got the ‘rona! I talk about how many of the things software engineers think they should or shouldn’t be doing probably don’t have any impact on the success or failure of the software … Continue reading →

I explore the theme of community and the difficulty I have with feeling like a member of a community of technologists. This was motivated by Joy, or Not by Ron Jeffries. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry Society of … Continue reading →

An episode about the philosophy of software engineering.

@sharplet asked me a few questions, and you can too! The theme music is Blue-Eyed Stranger. Evidence-Based Software Engineering Using R. Median household income in the UK in January 2021 was £29,900 (I said “about £28,000”). Median software engineer salary … Continue reading →

I muse on a concept I’ve been thinking about for a long time: that software engineering is trapped within the confines of the fixed-width text editing paradigm. This was motivated by a discussion with Orta about his Shiki Twoslash project … Continue reading →

I contextualise the x86_64 to arm64 transition by talking about all the other times Apple have switched CPUs in their personal computers; the timeline is roughly 6502-m68k-ppc-ppc+i386-ppc64-i386-x86_64-arm64. Sorry, Newton fans!

In which I posit that software freedom is a small part of a bigger picture. Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation of Europe Software Freedom Conservancy Electronic Frontier Foundation [objc retain]; Just Consequentialism and Computing (paywalled; accessible link) Use the … Continue reading →

This episode is about technology, culture, community, and career. No links because it’s mostly a personal history and there’s only so much self-promotion I can fit in one episode. That said! If you enjoy this podcast and would like to … Continue reading →

In which I use this hacker news discussion on Agile to ask the question: has the poacher become the gamekeeper? I definitely talked about Questioning Extreme Programming by Pete McBreen, and Ron Jeffries has a take on that book too. … Continue reading →

In which we investigate the question why are climate models written in programming languages from 1950?, the discussion some programmers had about it, and the phenomenon that programmers seem to think that everybody else’s programming work just can’t be that … Continue reading →