Exploring the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming. Learning to work with the systems, not against them.
The Human DevOps - Sunday 8th September 2024 - How To Enjoy Software Engineering
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How was your summer? Does it feel like it's still happening, or are you already back in the thick of things? It's been a bit of both for me over the last few weeks. I've been in and out of holiday mode. The weather is still hot, but the office is in action. Next week, I'm off to London, where I'll be attending the second edition of the Fast Flow Conference with the Team Topologies organisation and heading to SaaS CTO Conference to meet with tech leaders and find out what's got them worried and/or interested. If you missed my article about last year's Fast Flow conference, here's the write-up. I'm wondering how much GenAI will be discussed at these conferences. The continued rhetoric, especially around AI, is a little taxing. I don't believe any business is smart enough to know how to best deploy or take advantage of GenAI other than the vendors already selling it. It's now bundled into Microsoft contracts and forced into our desktops and into our ways of working through Co-Pilot integrations but still, aside from migration project successes, daily use seems almost non-existent. Increasingly, I feel that most consultants are falling into the same camp. There's a lot of froth being generated about it because a lot of money is being thrown at it, but a couple of years later, we're still waiting to see what sticks. For me, the best thing GenAI has produced so far is the real-time generation of Doom. This is no game engine; it is purely GenAI trained on Doom. Last week, I sent Part 1 of my novel Human Software to alpha readers to gather some early feedback. Over the next weeks and months, I'll polish it, still aiming for publication in January 2025. Watch this space for updates! See below for a few articles musing about the nature of consultancy, teams and Philip K. Dick's vacation! Have a great weekend! The Gift of HelplessnessPublished on August 26, 2024 Did Philip K. Dick ever take a vacation? From reading him you wouldn’t think he strayed far from his thoughts. On my vacation I just read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik. These are two classics of his pantheon. I had to ask myself, why had I waited so long to read any… Read More »The Gift of Helplessness
The Limitations of the One-Person ConsultancyPublished on September 5, 2024 In January 2022, I started writing a book about automation. Shortly afterwards, I set up a blog. Every day, I wrote about things that annoyed me about software development and about things that I thought would help me contribute to its improvement. This turned into reading every day about software development. This turned into writing… Read More »The Limitations of the One-Person Consultancy
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The Human Engineer
Exploring the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming. Learning to work with the systems, not against them.
January is over. The longest month! I managed to get a break in Chamonix, nominally to do some skiing, but for the most part it was marvelling at the beauty of it all. The world around us. So, I'm in the alps taking a break from the uncertainty of the present and facing my own mortality on the gentlest slopes near Mont Blanc. It's wonderful being up there with friends, I feel very lucky, and I also don't feel any real need to push myself like I would have done in the older days. I went out...
A few weeks before Christmas I asked ChatGPT a series of questions along the lines of "ok, so what next?" I was out of ideas. I was tired. My freelance contract was coming to an end so I was already looking for a new one. Launching Human Software had been exhilarating but exhausting. I'd burned the candle at both ends on social media plus done some podcasts (a few of which are yet to see the light of day) and also put myself in front of bookshops and chased reviews and talked talked talked...
REBRAND ALERT!! So it's been a while since I renamed this newsletter but I feel it's due a slight sidestep following the launch of my book. So welcome to episode 286 overall, but episode #1 of The Human Engineer. Despite me constantly rename this newsletter, over these years the subject has never really varied too much. I talk about software systems and how they relate to human systems. I find my work increasingly focusses on the human side of the this divide - because it is a divide right?...