HR 3200 from a systems design perspective (Part II)
In the first part of this three-part series, I briefly outlined the parallels between developing software and crafting legislation, while pointing out the great risks and issues in the latter. I also...
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iPad Mini: the Goldilocks iPad for kids
With the growing swell of articles about the still-hypothetical iPad Mini — see, for example, this thoughtful analysis over at Vodkapundit – I find it interesting that I see very little written about...
View ArticleWeighing in on Project Orca
[Cross posted from And Still I Persist] [Note: I am currently in transit from Colorado to Florida and am composing this post as I have time and 'net access.] “All the most important mistakes are made...
View ArticleControlling IT Costs: Using a Maintenance Architect
Software rots over time. Of course, it doesn’t literally decompose, but it often becomes fragile, harder to support and more likely to break when something else in the enterprise’s IT environment...
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Link to post: Why Apple’s 64-bit CPU in the iPhone 5S matters
Via the always informative Daring Fireball comes a link to this post by Mike Ash explaining the performance implications of Apple’s new 64-bit A7 CPU in its iPhone 5S (and, I sincerely hope, in its...
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Remember Conway’s Law
Some years ago, I was called in to lead a team of three other people in reviewing a major project at a Fortune 50 corporation. This project, which I’ll call QUBE, was a major end-to-end re-engineering...
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Link to post: how Nokia missed the smartphone boat
Again, via John Gruber at Daring Fireball, comes this story from a Norwegian journalist who wrote a letter of complaint to Nokia in 2008 about his new Nokia smartphone. An excerpt from his letter:...
View ArticleCS 428 (Fall Semester, 9/11): Lecture on The Mythical Man-Month (Brooks),...
OK, it’s a bit embarrassing to realize it’s been nine months since I last posted here. But a new semester has started, and with it, my lectures on software engineering for CS 428 (at Brigham Young...
View ArticleDisplacing entrenched technology
Successful technology — and I’m using the term broadly here, not just limiting myself to digital tech — has a propensity to entrench itself and then become very hard to displace, at least directly. A...
View ArticleCS 428 – Winter 2019 – Webster #01 readings
In-class lecture on three of my blog posts on software engineering:The Real Software Crisis — an article published in BYTE (January, 1996) The Wetware Crisis: TEPES — A follow-up post written in 2008...
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