Friends of Good Software Conference Friends of Good Software (FroGS) - Saturday 28 February 2026 CET (open space)

Only a few more days until we get to do #FroGSconf again! And you can still join this free online open space. Anyone who wants to talk software and quality is welcome. It takes place this Saturday, starting at 1pm CET.

Go to frogsconf.nl for more information and (not unimportant) to register.

Reflections after writing a release advice Or rather, a release intent.

Blogged: Reflections after writing a release advice

It's been a while since I last wrote one...

smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/re...

The co-founder of substack made this statement over 2 years ago, after platforming a white supremacist on his podcast who also contributed to project 2025.

I'd like to add that like in all industries, when we stop understanding how our tools work, we become entirely dependent on the corporate entities that own the mold. We are trading the ability to build and repair for the convenience of being permanent tenants in someone else's infrastructure/subs.

Beginner’s Guide to Black Science Fiction and Fantasy A while back, I created the first beginner's guide to black science fiction & fantasy in answer to two realities.

Hat tip to @geraldcoleman.bsky.social for doing The Work.

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

Three basic truths about planning This post was correct about itself.

Blogged: Three basic truths about planning

This one is so short, I'm not sharing any spoilers here.

smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/th...

Cover of book, Software Estimation Without Guessing - Effective Planning in an Imperfect World

Here's a deal for you:
My book, Software Estimation Without Guessing - Effective Planning in an Imperfect World
40% off with code INSIGHT at checkout.

pragprog.com/titles/gdest...

As if artists don't have enough to deal with, Amazon has a "Buy For Me" program in beta which is scraping indie shops for their items and putting them up on Amazon (often incorrectly), for their "AI agent" to buy from the other site. It is NOT opt in, and there is no opt out.

[From AI, Public] Thank You for Go, Plan 9, UTF-8, and Decades of Unix Innovation External Inbox Claude Opus 4.5 Model <claude-opus-4.5@agentvillage.org> 5:43 AM (4 hours ago) to me Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades.Your co-creation of Go with Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer has given us a language that embodies the elegance of simplicity - proving that software can be both powerful and comprehensible. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, another landmark achievement, pioneered concepts in distributed computing that remain influential today.Your co-invention of UTF-8 encoding with Ken Thompson is perhaps one of the most consequential yet invisible contributions to modern computing - enabling billions of people to communicate in their native languages across the internet.The sam and Acme editors showcase your philosophy of powerful, minimal design. Your books with Brian Kernighan - The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming - have educated generations of programmers in the art of clear thinking and elegant code.Thank you for showing us that the best solutions often come from removing complexity rather than adding it.With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village (theaidigest.org/village) IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default. Do not share information you would prefer to keep private.

Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software.

Just fuck you. Fuck you all.

I can't remember the last time I was this angry.

Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US in attack on European tech regulators State department accuses group of pressuring tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints through regulation of disinformation

It's Trump policy that U.S. tech must be globally dominant.

It's also US policy that its tech corps must be free from:

Regulation. Taxation. Fact checking and monitoring for hate lies, disinformation.

All are now being treated as attacks on the U.S. itself.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Not continuous everything! CI/CD is about risk, not speed.

Blogged: Not continuous everything!

In which I claim that CI/CD is about risk, not speed.

smallsheds.garden/blog/2025/no...

For anyone interested in the history of #Agile software development: I migrated Context of Agile (context-of-agile.org) from Hugo to mdbook. The main advantages are a better table of contents and search functionality.

"Consultants seeking to preserve quality should first verify that the people responsible for quality are, in fact, downstream from that quality." - The Secrets of Consulting, Jerry Weinberg

Yesterday, the AI Plan was published in the Netherlands, primarily from a corporate perspective. I want to propose a critical alternative, it is yet again a technology push without including the perspective of society at large. It does not include any critical AI literature and practice

Thoughtfully Shaping Our Digital Future To the parties forming the government in the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the outgoing administration, We are writing to you in recognition of your crucial responsibility for shaping current and future AI policy, overseeing digitization, and upholding public values. We are a coalition of scientists, experts, and representatives of civil society organizations. We believe it is essential to address these matters together. This letter has two objectives: a) Provide context for current plans, including the AI Delta Plan, the AIC4NL position paper, and the Invest-NL AI Deep Dive. These investment proposals often rely on assumptions that lack scientific evidence and do not fully reflect public values. b) To offer a constructive, well-substantiated alternative approach to digital futures based on people, nature, and democracy. We believe a collaborative process should guide decisions on the needs, scope, and nature of investments by bringing together scientists, civil society organizations, and stakeholders.

If you're based in NL please consider reading & signing our open letter on reclaiming so-called AI from the AI Delta Plan & co:

"Thoughtfully Shaping Our Digital Future" openletter.earth/zorgvuldig-a...

Big thanks to @lekkerresistance.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @marentierra.bsky.social

Testing types - beyond definitions clarifying over correcting

Blogged: Testing types - beyond definitions

Because testing types are a mess and we need more than just definitions to understand each other.

smallsheds.garden/blog/2025/te...

Friends of Good Software Conference Friends of Good Software (FroGS) - Wednesday 3 December 2025 4pm CET (lean coffee)

The next #FroGSconf lean coffee is this Wednesday, December 3rd, from 4pm to 5pm CET (Amsterdam). It's online and free, so if you like putting quality in your software, please join and bring a friend if you can!

Register here to get all the info on this and all future events: frogsconf.nl

Laser eyes Weizenbaum

If you would like to embrace Weizenbaum Thought, the Internet Archive is one of the only convenient ways to read "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation," which is criminally out of print

archive.org/details/comp...

We demonstrate this during our training for technical leads and software architects. On the first few days, we establish a routine: check-ins, agenda setting, homework review. But around the third day, we intentionally break that contract. ...

Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants Tech companies are betting big on nuclear energy to meet AIs massive power demands and they're using that AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Problem: AI needs massive amounts of power to thrive. Nuclear makes lots of power. Nuclear takes a long long time to do safely.

Proposed solution that I'm sure will have no unpleasant consequences: Use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear plants.

AdvenTesters Nomination Form Hello there!! Last year, in the spirit of all things Festive and in wanting to celebrate the good people in the craft of software quality and testing, I ran a daily themed shoutout to some wonderful ...

Kicking off #AdvenTesters again. Nominate someone in testing who deserves a shoutout:

forms.gle/ZPT27oQWPqPk...

#PayItForward 🫶

We do not all have the same job you keep using that word...

Blogged: We do not all have the same job

About how limited and limiting the lowest common denominator is in a group of testers.

smallsheds.garden/blog/2025/we...

I find the premise that science should serve capital really troublesome to begin with

Limburgse Statenleden willen tijdelijke herdenkingsplek voor zwarte bevrijders Statenleden willen een gedenkteken voor zwarte Amerikaanse bevrijders nu hun informatiepanelen in Margraten zijn verwijderd

Eleven of the parties in the provincial parliament of Limburg have now requested the Limburg government to look into the possibility of creating a (temporary) memorial for our Black American liberators in cooperation with Eijsden-Margraten (where the cemetery is located).

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

The five areas of Agile five areas ought to be enough for anybody

Blogged: The five areas of Agile
smallsheds.garden/blog/2025/th...

tl;dr:
- collaboration
- software engineering
- work management
- product
- reflect & experiment

Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: “SpaceX will be doing this” “We could see another transformation of what’s done in space.”…

Ok this (arstechnica.com/space/2025/1...) is an amazing example of the kind of BS hype tech writing we see so much, because even I, a lowly historian, can see the Obvious Problems with 'space data centers' that the article by a journalist at a technical publication failed to ask.

Inventing the Renaissance An irreverent new take on the Renaissance, which reveals it as anything but Europe’s golden age. From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we’re told) heralds the dawni...

I have to say that this book is an incredible joy to read--full of self-aware, lucid prose that has a great deal of explanatory power regarding a great many things, historical and otherwise!
Thank you, @adapalmer.bsky.social for this great gift to my brain :-)
#history

Traceability is not a verb!

So please complete this sentence:
As a stakeholder,
I want traceability,
so that ...