Tudor Girba Profile picture
Software environmentalist | CEO @feenkcom
Jun 2, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
I have witnessed the refinement of the mapping process described by @swardley first hand. I can attest that it does work.

You still need the skills to transform words into maps and back. But I have seen it work consistently with people that do not know each other upfront.

1/ @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.

I think that's extraordinary.

2/
Sep 27, 2022 11 tweets 5 min read
This article 👇 offers an introduction to #MoldableDevelopment.

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.



1/
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.

2/
Jul 29, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
A case study of #MoldableDevelopment:

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.

1/ Image 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.

2/ Image
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.

1/ 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.

2/
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.

1/
Typically, it all starts with a vision.

2/ Image
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.

1/
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.



2/
Nov 30, 2021 21 tweets 8 min read
#ToolsForThought

But, what thought?

🧵

1/
The recent conversations about #ToolsForThought tend to revolve around note taking. Indeed, a note can be a representation of thought...

2/
Nov 9, 2021 20 tweets 9 min read
I gave a talk at #QConPlus on "Moldable Development by Example".

A summary.

1/ Image The talk consisted mostly of two stories. Two examples.

I started with a little story inspired by our recent experience of going through the Open edX system.



2/
May 17, 2021 30 tweets 6 min read
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.

1/
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.

2/
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.

1/
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.



2/
Apr 11, 2021 10 tweets 2 min read
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.

1/
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.

2/
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.



1/
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”.



2/
Mar 3, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Tell us about programming languages that people might perceive to be extinct, but are still around today.

Let’s see how many we get.

👇
Feb 28, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
The monolith vs microservices debate…

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.

The answer lies somewhere else.

1/ “It’s the people!”

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.

2/
Jan 22, 2021 18 tweets 7 min read
“Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out."

Let’s dissect this a little.

🧵

1/
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.

2/
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/