Roland Eschenburg

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

Charles Babbage, inventor of the mechanical computer, 1864

Systems Thinking Rant Redux Part III We’ve got examples! In the third episode of a three-part series, Squirrel and Jeffrey revisit the contentious discussion around system thinking and their reaction to an article by Ed Braden.They look

In the final part of our trilogy, spurred on by Ed Bradon’s article, Jeffrey and I look at examples of systems thinking implemented in both small and large government projects, highlighting successes like the UK's automatic enrolment in pensions.
soundcloud.com/troubleshoot...

Consider the possibility that, in software development, communication and feedback is the work, and coding is the interruption.

well.. apparently that worked

I've just given the genie a stackoverflow link to help it solve a problem.. fingers crossed..

off we go to .cursorrules..
Priorities:
0. Fix build failures

shit the genie says, that proves it has been trained on 'people':
"The build failed so I couldn't verify the test was red, but we know the test would fail anyway, so lets just carry on with the implementation.."

No, guess-bot. That's not how that works at all.

I have questions around data residency..

Enjoying the vibe coding experience. I’ve avoided it for a long time.. but I had a problem I needed to solve and an iOS app felt like the right solution. I’ve never written a line of swift in my life! Yet, here I am, two days of on and off prompting, with a fully functioning app 😱

Before you go, can you just quickly update the health monitoring system for our network load balancers?

Obviously I’m assuming you’re learning from each arrow. Would be terrible if you were aiming at the wrong thing for a long time. I think Kent Beck said something like ‘not more right, but less wrong’ - ie wrong for less amount of time.

I’m struggling with your analogy/picture. Sending lots of small arrows quickly into lots of directions should increase your chance of accidentally hitting the right target. Spending a lot of time carefully aiming at one thing only, assumes that you confidently aiming at the right thing.

good to know! :) maybe put us down on the waiting list for a couple of copies and should other interest materialise, we pool together?

@jasongorman.bsky.social - how can I get a physical copy or two of your TDD book? Our office library is missing it.

A great episode reflecting on 400 episodes of Troubleshooting Agile. Also possibly the funniest episode banner, ever. The party hats are the best 😂

But Jason - refactoring doesn't scale. Retire and replace is often the better option. /s

Recoding Troubleshooting Agile with @dsquirrel.bsky.social and @jeffreyfredrick.bsky.social live at @citcon.bsky.social

It’s CITCON time! @citcon.bsky.social

on second thought.. does that mean the AI can go to.. like.. most of my meetings?

hmm, according to some people, it's the work done by Jr developers 🤔

#noestimates

just putting it out there..

citconf.com/london2025/#...

Hyped - it's CITCON Europe week! Looking forward to welcoming @jeffreyfredrick.bsky.social and @pauljulius.bsky.social in our IDBS office in Woking (London) on Friday, alongside many other attendees old and new.
There are still a few places available for a last minute registration!

You know this.. but how many 'Execs' don't know this?

Starmer banks on £150bn investment to placate critics of Trump state visit Prime minister seeks to make best of difficult state visit by US president with package of commitments by US firms

Let's be clear. These companies aren't "investing in the UK". They're investing in themselves, and we've seen how that usually works out for the UK over the last few decades. They're coming here to extract, not invest.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Looking forward to this one! I’ve attended the last two years and found it incredibly engaging and educational. Very excited to be able to host this year!

I thought we agreed with Windows Vista that this glass design crap - now I have to figure out how to turn it off on my phone 🤦‍♂️

sign up here for free: citconf.com/london2025/

#CITCON Europe 2025 on the 26th and 27th of September. Currently signed up attendees have written and published ~15 books, countless blogposts and given countless keynotes on the topics of agile, testing, devops and software development between them. I, for one, am looking forward to learning a lot