The world is constantly changing. From electricity to cars to television to the internet, most generations have seen at least one breakthrough. This will continue, and it's certain that my generation will witness another technological shift. Interestingly, how we react to new technologies changes itself with time. For a lot of new technologies, my first … Continue reading Reality Box
10x
Fred Brooks started it all. In The Mythical Man Month, he quotes a study saying individual difference between low and high performers can vary by an order of magnitude Since then this myth of 10x productivity difference has persisted in our industry. Nowadays it's best seen in the use of words like rockstar, guru or … Continue reading 10x
A Machine for Jumping to Conclusion
The brain is a wonderful machine with an impressive computing power. We can make sense of complex information effortlessly and almost instantly. But it has one big flaw: it does not understand probabilities. When presented with information, the brain tries to explain it by building a coherent story out of it. To do so quickly, … Continue reading A Machine for Jumping to Conclusion
Things You Can’t Abstract
The art of programming is to a large extent the art of devising abstractions. Some might be very general and reusable in many contexts, some will be more specialized and applicable only in some domains. The purpose of abstraction is to hide complexity so that we don't need to care about details. Using abstractions, we … Continue reading Things You Can’t Abstract
Become a Domain Expert
It is only possible to design a feature correctly if you have enough understanding of the underlying business domain. Large software systems may have complex domain models with many special situations that aren't immediately obvious. Taking the time to understand the domain is crucial for making the right assumptions during development. Failing to understand the … Continue reading Become a Domain Expert
Lateral Thinking
Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward De Bono to characterize the generation of alternative ideas, as opposed to vertical thinking, which generates ideas based on logic and stepwise refinements. Another way to explain lateral thinking in a much common way is "thinking out of the box." Often finding the best solution to a … Continue reading Lateral Thinking
Making Progress
The essence of Scrum is to ensure progress. The formal elements of the framework --the restrospective, reviews, daily standup, etc.-- are not ends in themselves but ways to ensure that progress happens. It may seem simplistic to reduce Scrum to the mere fact of ensuring progress, but ensuring progress is not that easy, and Scrum … Continue reading Making Progress
Gall’s Law
Gall's law states that complex systems can only be the result of an evolutionary process, and not the result of a design from scratch: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to … Continue reading Gall’s Law
Scala: An Ambitious Language
In the object paradigm, a system consists of objects with mutable state, whereas in the functional paradigm, it consists of functions and immutable values. At first, these two worlds seem incompatible. But not so for Odersky. In 2004 he released the first version of Scala, a language that combines both. Scala's roots are object-oriented, sharing … Continue reading Scala: An Ambitious Language
Feedback
Making sure that your project will be successful really boils down to two things: 1) get things done, 2) get feedback. It's obvious why getting things done matters: if you want to move forward, you need to get things done. Getting things done is however not a sufficient condition to be successful. You could be … Continue reading Feedback
