So many people believe that only merit should matter, including me when I was younger. Advancement should be earned, the best idea wins, etc. Great theory...but...
But assessing merit in knowledge work is always hard & often impossible. Instead, performance ends up assessed on vibes & opinion. Supposed "merit" inevitably comes down to the question: "Do I feel comfortable with them?"
I stopped believing in a meritocracy when I realized how much energy I put into learning to say Shibboleth.
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Do y'all know the story of how the Estonian people regained their freedom, seceded from the Soviet Union, and in doing so helped topple an empire...by singing? The Singing Revolution is an amazing documentary. Trailer here: https://singingrevolution.com/ - I didn't find it for free online but seems to be available for purchase on the usual streaming sites. Definitely worth a watch.
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I just donated to the Internet Archive. Why? Well, first I'm super grateful that they still have the first website I ever built stored away. I've actually recovered writing I'd lost thanks to them. (Wanna see it? Check out https://web.archive.org/web/19980526105555/http://www.qualitytree.com/)
But the bigger reason is because usaid.gov has been taken offline. But it's archived. It has dawned on me that as things change...rapidly...an independent archive is going to be really, really important.
Do what you will with that notion.
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Reading Dijkstra's 1972 Turing Award Lecture transcript. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html
He says: "If software development were to continue to be the same clumsy and expensive process as it is now, things would get completely out of balance. You cannot expect society to accept this..."
I'm convinced the "software crisis" stemmed from an unrealistic expectation that software should cost less than hardware. Improvements are still important. But the 'crisis' was indeed just the end of an illusion.
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OK OK this one is the last one. I think I have found the earliest use of the notion of a walking skeleton. Again, this is 1968.
"Begin with skeletal coding: Rather than aiming at finished code, the 46 first coding steps should be aimed at exploring interfaces, sizes of critical modules, complexity, and adequacy of the modules... The contributions of this step should be insight and experience, with the aim of exploring feasibility." -- David
(edited for brevity)
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Oh! One more. Last one, I swear:
"As one single example of such a source of ideas I would like to mention: Christopher Alexander: Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Harvard Univ. Press, 1964)" -- Naur.
Yup, that's right. The connection between Alexander's work on architecture and software was made as early as 1968. 😮
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I'll just stop here. The entire paper is AMAZING. You can find a copy here: http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PDF
Seriously, I wish I'd read this report earlier. So many of the pain points that the participants discuss will feel familiar to anyone in software. Technology has changed. People have not. We have some better answers now than we did then. But we still have the same pressures, and illusions, that led to the original declaration of a "crisis."
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“There are two classes of system designers. The first, if given five problems will solve them one at a time. The second will come back and announce that these aren’t the real problems, and will eventually propose a solution to the single problem which underlies the original five. This is the ‘system type’ who is great during the initial stages of a design project. However, you had better get rid of him after the first six months if you want to get a working system.” — Kinslow
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"I know of one organisation that attempts to apply time and motion standards to the output of programmers. They judge a programmer by the amount of code he produces. This is guaranteed to produce insipid code — code which does the right thing but which is twice as long as necessary." -- McClure
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Back to the 1968 report. SO MANY GOOD QUOTES. Gonna thread a few of my favs.
"Today we tend to go on for years, with tremendous investments to find that the system, which was not well understood to start with, does not work as anticipated. We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes — build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again." -- Graham
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"Don't confuse the menu with the meal" is my new favorite phrase.
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Now reading Randell's 1979 comments on the 1968 report (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/800091.802915). He quotes J.W. Smith:
"I'm still bemused by the way they attempt to build software... They begin with planning specification, go through functional specifications, implementation specifications, etc., etc. If you look down the PERT-chart you discover that all the nodes on it up until the last one produce nothing but paper. It is unfortunately true that people confuse the menu with the meal."
(edited for brevity)
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Reading the NATO report on software engineering that came out of the 1968 conference where the term "software crisis" was coined. (It's at https://www.scrummanager.com/files/nato1968e.pdf if you want to read it too.)
Currently on page 11. ELEVEN. (Out of 200+.) It says right here: "The need for feedback was stressed many times."
We knew. Have always known. Feedback is the key to everything. Any process that intentionally delays feedback is going to run into problems. We took such a wrong turn in the 1990s. Ugh.
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In other news...
I spent many hours over the last few days setting up a new authoring toolchain that involves markdown in Obsidian with the Longform plugin plus pandoc to generate PDF via the Eisvogel latex template. Along the way I experimented with exporting to docx with a reference file, started using mermaid in Obsidian, and just finished installing all the google fonts locally so I can use the right fonts for my brand in the generated PDF.
So...
Yak, or squirrel? Who can say.
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Currently playing a game I call: Yak or Squirrel?
A yak is a precondition to doing something I need to do. I may or may not need to shave the yak. (The difference between a jr & sr eng is knowing which yaks to shave.) But the yak exists in service to some other goal.
A squirrel, on the other hand, is a distraction. A boondoggle. A toy. A shiny new thing.
How could I possibly confuse the two? Easy. I want to believe this squirrel is a yak because then I'm justified in chasing it.
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Well that's enough internet for me today.
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Excited to announce that @joeltosi and I have launched our first official joint systems thinking workshop! A tight, focused, 4-hour hands-on virtual workshop that teaches you thinking tools you can use immediately on your real-world challenges. Full details at https://thinker.curiousduck.io/
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Finally, these labels--masculine, neutered, and feminine--are inherently problematic. They reinforce a view of gender roles that serves no one. Equating feminine energy with weakness is a tactic to keep women in a subservient place in society, and also to constrain acceptable behavior in men. Internalizing that BS robs you of your true power, regardless of gender. Men can be collaborative & inclusive and will be penalized just as much as women for stepping outside their supposed gender role.
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I actually listened to the podcast Even with extra context it's still toxic sexist BS. The the idea that corp culture has been "neutered" with "feminine energy" totally dismisses the raw power in feminine energy. It's that energy that holds things together and keeps them moving forward when all the other forces in the universe are trying to break them apart. I'm a strong leader not in spite of my feminine energy but BECAUSE of it. But if I show that strength? I'm too aggressive.
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So, I've been thinking about the "masculine energy" thing. Saw some folks on LinkedIn agreeing with Zuck's sentiment, saying the news didn't accurately portray what he actually said...that it's not about gender, it's a pendulum that swung too far.
I call BS on that.
Those of us who present as women get penalized for being too masculine. When I've been assertive, I was called aggressive. When I was direct, I was called blunt. And people used those labels to justify ignoring or sidelining me.
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