I will confess I am a lucky man. I was fortunate enough to marry a woman who is in many ways as nerdy as I am, which makes so many aspects of a technical life a lot easier. Thanks to her, we now know of LiveScience.com’s top 10 ways to destroy the Earth! 10. Total […]
I’ve begun the process of updating and generalizing the original pitfalls (in Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development) for Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering (or PMSE). Just scroll past the introductory text, and you’ll see an outline of the actual live content. As with The Art of ‘Ware, feedback and contributions are encouraged. ..bruce..
I’m finishing up an expert report for a patent case that I’m working on, so I haven’t been able to push forward with PMSE. However, I am posting a PDF of Chapter 2 from the original Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development (M&T Books, 1995). This should be useful for those of you interested in contributing to […]
While waiting for feedback on the web-based and PDF versions of The Art of ‘Ware, I have started work on Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering (or, as I call it, PMSE or ‘pimsee’). I have done a first (and very preliminary draft) of the introduction to PMSE. My next step will be to take the […]
Mike Morton, a long-time friend and colleague and a Master of Anagrams, send me a link to a great story about a group of IT engineers dealing with a CEO who just didn’t understand Brooks’ Law: After failing to win several arguments on this point, the engineers became exasperated and decided to hold an intervention […]
Despair.com — long one of my favorite sites — now has a web-based function to do your own ‘Demotivation’ posters. For example: Or: Or, in honor of the puppy postings below: Hat tip to Ace of Spades. ..bruce..
(UPDATED BELOW) (And, Megan, thanks for the Instalanche!) I haven’t been terribly happy with Sen. Reid’s battle against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site over the years, but even I have to agree he’s got a good point here: WASHINGTON (AP) – Sen. Harry Reid has a new argument against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste […]
Well, no new loose bolts or other failures have been disclosed over the weekend. Mostly, people are jockeying for position, to either take advantage of or avoid fallout from the Big Dig Crumble. Design News (via Slashdot) asks whether the Big Crumble is one of engineering’s biggest mistakes. A few of the folks on Slashdot […]
While the State of Massachusetts has been carrying out its own investigations, the National Transportation Safety Administration has started its own separate probe into the causes of the Big Dig Crumble’s collapse earlier this month (via Andrew Miga at the Associated Press via Forbes): Federal investigators are looking into whether vibrations from nearby construction could […]
Bad legislation, bad government and IT project failure
I ran across a blog entry this morning, Mark Steyn citing John Podhoretz regarding the uproar over the immigration bill being rushed through the Senate despite being incomplete, inconsistent and, by and large, incomprehensible. Here are the nested posts in full: Given his general antipathy to the National Review line on illegal immigration, I thought […]
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