Sources - On (Modern?) Software Development

“Thoughts on (Modern?) Software Development – Observations From a 20-Year Journey”

The Traveler

[starting] Characteristics –Software Development (1)

Warning – The anecdote

https://twitter.com/swardley/status/526074463175966720

Warning – The scientific study

Experience – In real life

Excerpt from the foreword of „The Peter Principle”

„[…] Death Is Nature’s Warning to Slow Down

As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence.

We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.

We see men in groups, and most of the human race, struggling for status on a treadmill to oblivion, escalating warfare and weaponry to overkill the population of the world, escalating production of power and products while polluting the environment and upsetting the life-supporting ecological balance.

If man is going to rescue himself from a future intolerable existence, he must first see where his unmindful escalation is leading him. He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence. Man must realize that improvement of the quality of experience is more important than the acquisition of useless artifacts and material possessions. He must reassess the meaning of life and decide whether he will use his intellect and technology for the preservation of the human race and the development of the humanistic characteristics of man, or whether he will continue to utilize his creative potential in escalating a super-colossal deathtrap.

Man, on occasion, has caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror, and not immediately recognizing himself, has begun to laugh before realizing what he was doing. It is in such moments that true progress toward understanding has occurred. This book is intended to be that mirror.

LAURENCE J. PETER

August, 1970″

Learning – Dreyfus-Model (1): Overview

Learning – Dreyfus-Model (2): Details

Learning – Dreyfus-Model (3): Details

Learning – Dreyfus-Model (4): Implications

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

Learning – Refactor Your Wetware

Excursion – Cognitive Biases (1)

Excursion – Cognitive Biases (2)

Software Development „in the wild“

Factors of influence

Excursion – Imagination?

https://www.projectcartoon.com/ (not online anymore)

Imagination!

Coder – „Precision“

Coder – „Guess Work”

Coder – „Unreliable Data“ (1)

Coder – „Unreliable Data“ (2)

Coder – „Unreliable Data“ (3)

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/05/23/culture-eats/

Coder – „Questionable Knowledge“ (1)

Coder – „Questionable Knowledge“ (2)

https://twitter.com/richardadalton/status/737705680631672832 (not online anymore)

Excursion/Rant – „Normal“ humans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams

Excursion/Rant – „Coding“ humans

Coder – Observations

[continued] Characteristics – Software Development (2)

https://mstdn.social/@alexthurow/113583210613888505

Coder – Hype Driven Development

Current Hype – Large Language Models (1)

Current Hype – Large Language Models (2)

Current Hype – Large Language Models (3)

Current Hype – Large Language Models (4)

https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-illiterate-programmers

Current Hype – Large Language Models (5)

Current Hype – Large Language Models (6)

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/chatgpt-und-perplexity-ai-russland-manipuliert-westliche-chatbots-fuer-seine-propaganda-a-7e276236-cac3-4f35-8ad4-40eaba1c8caf

[continued] Characteristics – Software Development (3)

Challenges (Micro 1)

https://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2012/07/learning-agile.html

An Example – What is (subjectively) hard?

http://www.itworld.com/article/2833265/cloud-computing/don-t-go-into-programming-if-you-don-t-have-a-good-thesaurus.html (not online anymore)

Challenges (Micro 2) – Naming

https://www.digdeeproots.com/articles/on/naming-process/
https://geek-and-poke.com/geekandpoke/2013/8/20/naming-is-key (not online anymore)

Challenges (Micro 3) – Simplicity

Challenges (Macro 1)

Challenges (Macro 2)

Challenges (Macro 3)

Challenges (Macro 4)

Challenges (Macro 5)

The journey so far… (1)

The journey so far… (2)

The journey so far… (3)

https://twitter.com/growsmethod/status/1559174920315277312

The journey so far… (4)

https://twitter.com/visevic/status/1474104715168387080

The journey so far… (5)

https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1519910817323528195 (not online anymore)
https://mastodon.social/@islieb/109547827536520777

The journey goes on… (1)

The journey goes on… (2)

The journey goes on… (3)

https://twitter.com/SynStalker/status/1401607925110554633
https://twitter.com/RealSardonicus/status/1327317912873562117 (not online anymore)

The journey goes on… (4)

Excerpt from „This is water”

„[…] Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. […]’’

The journey goes on… (5)

More „Thoughts“-related sources

Additional sources were mentioned in „Thoughts on (Modern?) Software Development”-related discussions:

Alexs’ Hashtags
Development Culture
- Richard Sheridan “Joy, Inc.“
  —> How does a company look like, that has Kent Beck’s XP in its DNA and where „joy at work“ is a central idea?
- Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister in „Peopleware (re-visited)”: “The High-Tech Illusion“
  —> Why do we only think that we are working in the High-Tech business, while we are not really doing so?
- Baldur Bjarnason: “Out of the Software Crisis“
  —> The challenges of software development through the lens of systems thinking
- Gunter Dueck’s re:publica 2015 talk on the topic of „Swarm Stupidity“ (german)
- Third Wave: “Wohin steuert die Tech-Branche?“ (german)
  —> Very interesting read in context of „AI before AI got really big”
- John Allspaw: “How Your Systems Keep Running Day After Day“
  —> Outstanding talk covering a lot of topics, e.g.: „What happens when your senior developer starts to talk about his/her mental model in front of the team?”
- James Somers: “The Friendship That Made Google Huge“
  —> Article about THE central programming pair at Google
Software Development
- Uwe Friedrichsen: “Software – It is not what you think it is – Part 1”
- Uwe Friedrichsen: “Software – It’s not what you think it is – part 6“
- Uwe Friedrichsen: “Simplify” + “The Continuous Amnesia Issue” + mehr
- Arlo Belshee: “Promiscuous Pairing – What Really Makes Pairing (and Mobbing) Work“
  —> An experience report about what happened when „the pairing parter was switched every two hours”
- Dan McKinley: “Choose Boring Technology”
- Dave Thomas: “Simplicity”
- Dave Akins: “Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design”
Agility
- Kent Beck: “Extreme Programming Explained”
- Robert C. Martin in “Clean Agile”: The XP “Circle Of Life”
- Robert C. Martin: “The Future of Programming”
Artificial Intelligence
- Baldur Bjarnason: “The Intelligence Illusion“
  —> Why is AI (at least) potentially „bad for your business“?
- Joseph Weizenbaum: “Plug & Pray“
  —> Documentation about the topics of AI, robotics and technological disruption.Was produced shortly before his death.
- Uwe Friedrichsen: “Thoughts on AI and Software Development“
  —> Very good, four-part analysis of the current state of things when it comes to „AI in the year of 2025″
- Uwe Friedrichsen: „Solving the Wrong Problem“
  —> An addon to the previously mentioned, four-part blog post
- Uwe Friedrichsen: „AI and the Ironies of Automation – Part 1“
  —> Why quite some surprises will be waiting for the software development business, when AI will be uncritically adopted for software development
- Yuval Noah Harari: „Nexus“ and his TED interview
  —> Harari’s book on the topic of AI and an interview done a few years prior to the book
- Post recommended by Simon Wardley: „You Vibe It – You Run It?“
  —> On the topic of „AI is not a technology that fosters learning”
- The Anatomy of AI: https://anatomyof.ai
  —> How is AI „created“ before it is delivered to the „customer”?
Technological Disruption
- Jonathan Blow: „Preventing the Collapse of Civilization“
  —> What happened in history in (supposedly) pre-technological historic times and how does that relate to software development?
- James Somers: “The Coming Software Apocalypse“
  —> Very bad „clickbait“ title, but great content about the modern software industry and software development in general
- Neil Postman: Technopoly
  —> Tech-critical book, that is a very interesting read when you consider times it was written (in the 90s, before the Internet, mobile phone…)
- E. M. Forster: “The Machine Stops“
  —> Written in 1909 (!), clear-sighted like Jules Verne and his writing about submarines and skyscrapers even before they were invented
- Adam Greenfield: “Radical Technologies” (archive.org)
  —> An analysis of modern, disruptive technologies (Bitcoin, smartphones, AI, robotics…)
- Nicole Perlroth (NYT): “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends“
  —> Category „mind-blowing“ – about the year-spanning cyber weapons race
- Richard Clarke’s “Cyberwar“
  —> Book dating back to 2010; written by the former White House anti-terrorism czar, who took a career turn towards „cyber“
Learning
- Matt Beane: “The Skill Code“
  —> How does learning change in the age of AI?
- Charles Duhigg: “The Power Of Habit“
  —> How are human habits work and what are they good (and bad) for?
- Visualization of how “Communication of ideas“ works
  —> Yes, it is indeed that hard…
- Daniel Pink: RSA Animate: “Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”
- Adam Grant: “Think Again“
  —> Being able to change your way of thinking is a superpower… how do you learn that?
- Felienne Hermans: “The Programmer’s Brain“
  —> How does human cognition work and how should you „use“ your brains when it comes to being a developer?
- Michael Lewis: „The Undoing Project“
  —> A portrait of Daniel Kahneman and Amon Tversky, the „inventors“ of Cognitive Biases
- Nicholas Carr: „The Shallows“
  —> What happens with human cognition when a media change occurs: Book -> Internet? Was it changing by that?
Work Culture and Organizational Development
- Frédéric Laloux: “Reinventing Organizations”
- Frédéric Laloux: “Reinventing Organizations visuell”
- Joana Breidenbach & Bettina Rollow: „New Work Needs Inner Work”
- Timothy R. Clark: “The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety”
- Patrick Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- Donella H. Meadows: “Thinking in Systems – A Primer”
- Susan Goldsworthy: „Confronting and Navigating Inner Polarities in Leadership”
- Otto Scharmer: „u-lab: Leading From the Emerging Future“
- Spiral Dynamics: „Integrate Landkarte des IMU“ (german)
Business
- Evan Osnos: “Age of Ambition“
  —> An experience report about China and its inner inconsistencies
- Maja Storch: „Das Geheimnis guter Entscheidungen“ (german)
- Ryan Holiday: “Ego is the Enemy”
Misc Toots

“Solutions for (Modern?) Software Development – Approximations From a 20-Year Journey”

The Traveler

[Recap] Characteristics –Software Development

[Recap] The anecdote

https://twitter.com/swardley/status/526074463175966720

[Recap] Simplicity

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter_Dueck

[Recap] Professional Software Development

https://twitter.com/growsmethod/status/1559174920315277312

The Status Quo – Observations (1)

https://laughingmeme.org/2023/01/16/software-and-its-discontents-part-1.html

The Status Quo – Observations (2)

https://laughingmeme.org/2023/01/23/software-and-its-discontents-part-2-complexity.html

The Status Quo – Observations (3)

The Status Quo – Observations (4)

The Status Quo – Observations (5)

The Status Quo – Observations (6)

The Status Quo – Observations (7)

The Status Quo – Observations (8)

The Status Quo – “The Cloud”

The Real Challenge – “The Cloud”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rid2eNtlkuc

Umm, so Alex: What is IT all about?

Umm, so Alex: What is IT all about? (1)

Managing Complexity – The core questions…

Managing Complexity – What might be a fix?

Managing Complexity – More questions…

Managing Complexity – (d)MiB (1)

Managing Complexity – (d)MiB (2)

https://twitter.com/venkat_s/status/1518006880844632066

Managing Complexity – (d)MiB (3)

Managing Complexity – (d)MiB (4)

Managing Complexity – Check your metaphors (1)

Managing Complexity – Check your metaphors (2)

Umm, so Alex: What is IT all about? (2)

Managing Cognitive Load – The problem (1)

Managing Cognitive Load – The problem (2)

Managing Cognitive Load – The environment (1)

Managing Cognitive Load – The environment (2)

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimizations

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize your attention (1)

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize your attention (2)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize for distractions (1)

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize for distractions (2)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize for distractions (3)

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize for distractions (4)

https://mstdn.social/@alexthurow/110316737248302129

Managing Cognitive Load – Optimize for distractions (5)

Managing Cognitive Load – Prevent inconsistencies

Managing Cognitive Load – Never forget…

Umm, so Alex: What is IT all about? (3)

Human Interactions – Are you kidding me!? (1)

Human Interactions – Are you kidding me!? (2)

Human Interactions – The Project Management Triangle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

Human Interactions – The Software Management Triangle

Human Interactions – This thing called trust…

Human Interactions – What matters most in IT? (1)

https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1519910817323528195 (not online anymore)
https://mastodon.social/@islieb/109547827536520777

Human Interactions – What matters most in IT? (2)

Human Interactions – What matters most in IT? (3)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (1)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (2)

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A7bRdlfIHJc/XEd9GxLN77I/AAAAAAAABa4/TyT_TEI5bpsg5seYw7MYp4GDWHJc-5T1wCLcBGAs/s1600/Project+18_112.jpg

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (3)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (4)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (5)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (6)

Human Interactions – Gelled teams (7)

Human Interactions – The Learning organization

Umm, so Alex: What is IT all about? (4)

How Humans Tick – The way we operate…

https://twitter.com/richardadalton/status/737705680631672832 (not online anymore)

How Humans Tick – Refactor Your Wetware

How Humans Tick – The Dreyfus-Model (1)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1368823.From_Novice_to_Expert

How Humans Tick – The Dreyfus-Model (2)

How Humans Tick – The Dreyfus-Model (3)

How Humans Tick – The Dreyfus-Model (4)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

How Humans Tick – Cognitive Biases (1)

How Humans Tick – Cognitive Biases (2)

How Humans Tick – Sustainable pace (1)

How Humans Tick – Sustainable pace (2)

https://mstdn.social/@alexthurow/109366291767694324

How Humans Tick – Sustainable pace (3)

https://medium.com/a-woman-in-technology/the-stupidity-manifesto-412dbce2c97c

Ok now, Alex: What’s the goal? (1)

https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-photography-of-brown-concrete-building-2539462/

Ok now, Alex: What’s the goal? (2)

Ok now, Alex: What’s the goal? (3)

The journey goes on… (1)

https://twitter.com/SynStalker/status/1401607925110554633
https://twitter.com/RealSardonicus/status/1327317912873562117 (not online anymore)

The journey goes on… (2)

The journey goes on… (3)

„Thoughts to Solutions – Observations on (Modern?) Agility”

The Traveler

Professional Software Development (1)

https://twitter.com/growsmethod/status/1559174920315277312

Professional Software Development (2)

Agile Software Development (1)

Agile Software Development (2)

Professional Work Modes

Professional Meeting Modes

https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1045125634

Solutions for (Modern?) Software Development (1)

https://onmoderndev.de/en/consulting

Solutions for (Modern?) Software Development (2)

“From Education to Employment – A Requirements-Set for Modern Software Developers”

The Traveler

Agenda – Overview

Agenda – The Environment

The Environment – Where are you heading to?

The Environment – Factors of influence

The Environment – Imagination?

The Environment – Imagination!

The Environment – Challenges

Agenda – The Tools

The Tools – Learning

The Tools – Learning: The Dreyfus Model

The Tools – Refactor Your Wetware

The Tools – Experience from 10.000 feet…

The Tools – Experience in real life…

Exkurs – The anecdote

https://twitter.com/swardley/status/526074463175966720

Exkurs – The scientific study

The Tools – Your head

Agenda – The Coding

The Coding – Characteristics of software development

The Coding – Characteristics of software projects

The Coding – Simplicity (1)

https://www.pearson.com/en-us/subject-catalog/p/clean-code-a-handbook-of-agile-software-craftsmanship/P200000009044/9780136083252

The Coding – Simplicity (2)

The Coding – Simplicity (3)

The Coding – Simplicity (4)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan

The Coding – Technical Debt

The Coding – Automatic testing

The Coding – Refactoring

The Coding – What is (subjectively) hard?

https://www.itworld.com/article/2833265/cloud-computing/don-t-go-into-programming-if-you-don-t-have-a-good-thesaurus.html (not online anymore)

The Coding – Naming

https://www.digdeeproots.com/articles/on/naming-process/
https://geek-and-poke.com/geekandpoke/2013/8/20/naming-is-key (not online anymore)

Agenda – The Summary

The Summary – Takeaways

The journey goes on… (1)

https://twitter.com/SynStalker/status/1401607925110554633
https://twitter.com/RealSardonicus/status/1327317912873562117 (not online anymore)

The journey goes on… (2)

The journey goes on… (3)