At my first real job, around the turn of the millenium, software engineers were graded on a bell curve. On a scale of 1 to 5, most people should get 3s, with a lower number of 4s and 2s and a much lower number of 1s and 5s. The bell curve, also called the normal … Read moreSymmathesies follow a power law, not a bell curve
Here are 6 roles in collaborative decisionmaking. Which one are you? Who are you gonna fight with? What does this say about pull requests vs pair programming?
again: Every action has two results: a set of side effects on the world, and the next version of ourselves. Sometimes in the creation of an artifact, the artifact itself is less important than the process of creating it. Wardley Maps are like that too – it’s about the thought that goes into creating them, … Read moreThe artifact and the process
Knowledge work has to be done for the right reason to be done well. If I choose to implement a feature because I’ll get some reward for it, like a gold star on my next review, then I will implement it far enough to check the box. I won’t get it smooth, or optimal. I … Read moreAction is a process. Reasons matter.
There’s something magical about post-its falling off walls. ancient post-its on my own wall I think about this as my team spends time pruning tickets, closing ones that seemed important at the time, but now aren’t worth doing. These are ideas that need to fall through the cracks, to slide down the wall behind the file … Read moreDeliberate impermanence
TL;DR: the most productive development happens when one person knows the system intimately because they wrote it; this is in conflict with growing a system beyond what one person maintains. Let’s talk about why some developers, in some situations, are ten times more productive than others. hint: it isn’t the developers, so much as the … Read moreHyperproductive development
I like being a polyglot developer, even though it’s painful sometimes. I use lots of languages, and in every one I have to look stuff up. That costs me time and concentration. Yesterday I wanted to promote my locally-useful project from “I can run it in the IDE” to “I can run it at the … Read moreToday’s Rug: maven executable jar
I’m hella excited to get to work on Atomist full-time starting now (January 2017). Why? What do they do? Oh let me tell you! I love developing software, not least because we (as an industry) have not yet figured out how to software. We know it’s powerful, but not yet how powerful. Software is like … Read moreIt’s Atomist Time!