@swardley I find that the most exciting part, which might also be the most difficult to explain, is that conclusions seem to emerge before people agreeing with each other, or even before any of the participants having the conclusion formed a priori.
It's written for a first time reader. It's not quite short, but it's not that long either (~4000 words). It has concrete examples, but also a little broader theory.
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It starts from the reading problem: reading accounts for the single largest expense in software development today, but it's just a strategy to gather information from the system. We can automate much of it, but we should do it through custom tools.
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A while back we implemented the squarified treemap algorithm in #GToolkit.
The implementation is based on a paper written by Bruls, @mackees and van Wijk in 2000 that describes a heuristics-based algorithm.
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The paper describes the algorithm in detail, and most of the explanations are based on visual depictions.
Here is a visualization showing the core iterative steps taken by the algorithm.
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Feb 21, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A beautiful example of #MoldableDevelopment. The view itself is not the most interesting part. The fact that you can write it with a screen of code is. That code is the legend of the tool.
While the tool is generic, we can easily imagine customizing it for specific contexts. For example, highlight specific files that are important for a specific investigation, like those from a special folder. When every view is an extension, you enable a rich experience.
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Feb 19, 2022 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
"Everyone in the team should know the vision. Including the technical people." Sure, says everybody.
"Everyone in the team should know how the implementation. Including the non-technical people." What?!
Yep.
Let me take you on a ride.
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Typically, it all starts with a vision.
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Jan 3, 2022 • 20 tweets • 9 min read
Last year we shipped a first version of #Lepiter and it felt great to see it flying out the door:
Lepiter is the latest significant step in our journey to making systems explainable. Here is a behind the scene peak of how we got here.
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Our guiding north star @feenkcom is making the inside of systems explainable. We spent a great deal of energy rethinking how we can figure systems out, and this led to #MoldableDevelopment and #GToolkit.
Personal computing was conceived to be personal. Personal, as in experiencing computation the way it fits you. Your context should come first and dictate what is interesting. The experience should follow.
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For example, consider where you are reading this tweet. Or where you are writing a reply to it. It's not unlikely that you are doing it exactly in the same way many other millions of people are doing it: using the generic interface that Twitter offers.
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Apr 13, 2021 • 31 tweets • 12 min read
#MoldableDevelopment is a way of programming through which you construct custom tools for each problem.
What does that mean exactly?
Where does it come from?
Why is it relevant?
Read on.
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The original idea of #MoldableDevelopment came from the work on Humane Assessment through which I argued that we need custom tools to reason about software systems effectively.
Interviewing new employees is a two-way street. On the one hand, you want to know them. On the other hand, you want them to know you, too.
It's also useful to remember that the interaction is also an investment on both sides.
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While both parties are invested in similar ways, the conversation is not symmetric. For example, the interviewee is likely significantly more emotionally invested.
That's why as an interviewer, I prefer to compensate.
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Mar 12, 2021 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
A while back, I asked “what is architecture?” and I got many responses within just one day. Some serious, some more (bitter-sweet) joking. We can identify some cluster of responses, but even so, there are certainly a dozen distinct perspectives.
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That there are many perspectives is not a surprise given that the literature is full with competing definitions. For example, it's not atypical for architecture books to say something like: “there exists many definitions, so here is ours”.
By now there is plenty of evidence that both architectures can lead to a “mess”. This only shows that we should not look at these as mechanisms for controlling the said mess” in the first place.
Well, as long as it’s people building the system, of course it’s the people. But, saying that does not get us closer to figuring a way forward though.
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Jan 22, 2021 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
“Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out."
Let’s dissect this a little.
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The oldest reference on the topic I know of dates back to 1979:
Zelkowitz, Shaw, and Gannon. Principles of software engineering and design. Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, 1979.
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Apr 5, 2020 • 44 tweets • 8 min read
The governor of New Jersey called explicitly for COBOL programmers to help with the development of the unemployment system:
This is how the software environmentalism crisis looks like. An explanatory thread. 1/
In the software development industry, we focus exclusively on building systems. The conversations are dominated by new languages, new frameworks, new deployment options. And the body of software grows exponentially. At the same time, we are unable to remove old systems. 2/
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