Allen Holub

The thing about COBOL is that it's a language designed for a single purpose: to extract reports from a database. It's simple because it was designed to solve a single, focused problem. It fell out of use because it didn't work well for any other type of problem.

"Competent managers" often guarantee that you build the wrong thing on time and in budget. This is a management problem only in the sense that you need managers to focus on value first and foremost. When you build small, get feedback, and adjust, efficiency will take care of itself.

I don't believe in requirements. They are always wrong. Instead, I identify a problem, build the core of the core of the core solution, get feedback, and either adjust or use that feedback to decide what to do next. There are no requirements to manage, just conversations over released software.

The idea of "scope creep" is rooted in ineffective ways of working. It implies you have a perfect up-front design & implementing that leads to success. Never works. I work incrementally. Build small, get feedback, adjust. No "scope" to creep from. I design just enough to start the work, not finish.

That's a real issue. All those vibe-coding we-don't-need-programmers managers are going to bring down companies.

Maybe. It all depends on how you define "good." I don't think that "product management" is at all separate from development. Defining the product and writing the code are best done by the same people. One good thing about AI assistance is that it's driving that merger. Mere coders aren't valuable.

Balancing those trade-offs is exactly what a Software Architect does. It _is_ the job.

Exactly.

World War II is the last war that the US fought in on the side of "right." Every war since then has been unjustified. Every. One. The soldiers have been sold a bill of goods, manipulated into confusing patriotism with supporting corrupt politicians.

You're not giving him enough credit 😄

More so, I think. The Brits were driving the process.

At least 3 more years. Even if Trump were impeached (unlikely, given the sycophants in the Republican Party), Vance would then be in power, and he's just as much a moron as Trump. If they impeached both Trump and Vance at the same time, Mike Johnson would be president.

The war will continue as long as Trump can benefit from the distraction.

"Ignorance is strength." Orwell knew what he was talking about.

Are you talking about the removal of the Prime Minister when the Brits put the Shah in power or the Removal of the Shah that put Kahmanie in power? Only the first was legitimate.

He's sure trying. This is nothing but a "Wag The Dog" distraction at the expense of the Iranian people. The war will continue as long as Trump is in power and can benefit from the noise.

Don't delude yourself into thinking that Khamenei's death changes anything. Other hardliners will take power. I fully expect Iran to look like Gaza before Israel is done with it. Trump doesn't care about the Iranian people. This is just a "Wag the Dog" distraction.

Not voting is, itself, a vote. The people who don't vote are not making the statement they think they are. They are just casting their votes for whoever's winning.

Sitting around imagining how AI can "help" your customers without understanding their specific problems is just expensive arrogance.
3/3

And do exactly that—no bells and whistles; no futureproofing (select a change-friendly architecture instead). Forcing AI onto a customer who doesn't want it (because it doesn't solve a real or critical problem for them) is worse than waste. It drives people away.
2/3

In my experience, the vast majority of waste in a software shop is time spent building things nobody wants on top of overly complex architectures that solve problems we don't have. Focus on that. Put solving your customer's actual (not imagined) problems first.
1/3

No. The 40% of the country that supports Trump are idiots, or at least people who value tribalism over their own best interests. The rest of us are just fine, thank you.

You cannot defeat tyranny with tyranny. Sorry. Maybe not "love," but certainly not through war.

Not the year, the book by George Orwell. Used to be required reading in high school because it was considered a warning about the "evils of communism." In fact, the book is not about that at all. It's about how easy it is for a culture to fall into totalitarianism.

They are related. One of the reasons I think the situation with the working classes is so bad in the US is that poverty drives people into the military—sometimes as their only choice. A culture that glorifies soldiers is a driver for that. Keeping people poor keeps that cycle going.

That's absolutely true…a bit of history that most people don't seem to know or remember. Trump clearly wants to put another shah/puppet in power.

YouTube video by Alberta Tech Tricking a vibe coder into learning to code

Dude.
Solved it dude.
Code the vibe dude.
#VibeCoding
youtube.com/shorts/9693I...

I keep thinking I should put together a "good ideas, easily implemented" website for out-of-work people looking for something to do. This could be the first entry 😄.

To my mind, everybody who works for OpenAI is complicit. Sorry. People with AI skills at that level are not the ones having a hard time finding jobs.
7/7

Frankly, boycotting OpenAI is a start, but if you work for OpenAI, you are part of the problem. Some Nuremberg-like "I'm just an engineer following orders" defence is ethically bankrupt unless you actually endorse the behavior your work enables.
6/7