In all decisions, we bring our context with us. Layers of context, from what we read about that morning to who our heroes were growing up. We don’t realize how much context we assume in our communications, and in our code. One time I taught someone how to make the Baby Vampire face. It involves …
In REST there’s this rule: don’t save low-level links. Instead, start from the top and navigate the returned hyperlinks, as they may have changed. Detailed knowledge is transitory.This same philosophy helps in daily programming work. Say a bug report comes in: “Data is missing from this report.” My pair is more familiar with the reporting …
We like to take a hunk of data, graph one factor against another, demonstrate correlation, and infer causality. This naive form of analysis is appealing in its simplicity, but it doesn’t cut it in the real world. With Big Data, we can identify correlation out the wazoo, but it’s time to get way more sophisticated …
Read moreCausality: tougher than it looks, but we can take it on