Soft, or hard like mud

Soft skills are hard. “They take work to build and work to apply.” @ruthmalan The word “hard” describes sciences like physics and chemistry. It is confusing that “hard” can mean difficult, because these sciences aren’t more difficult than the “soft” ones like sociology and anthropology. They’re differently difficult. The “hard” sciences are hard because they’re …

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When knowledge is the limiting factor

In Why Information Grows (my review), physicist César Hidalgo explains that the difference between the ability to produce tee shirts vs rockets is a matter of accumulating knowledge and know-how inside people, and weaving those people into networks. Because no one person can know how to build a rocket from rocks. No one person understands …

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the future of software: complexity

The other day in Iceland, a tiny conference on the Future of Software Development opened with Michael Feathers addressing a recurring theme: complexity. Software development is drowning in accidental complexity. How do we fight it? he asks. Can we embrace it? I ask. Complexity: Fight it, or fight through it, or embrace it? Yes. Here, …

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