Writer, software engineer, author of Human Software. Thinking about the humans behind the systems.
Software Delivery Club Newsletter 2022-12-23
It's time for a little down-time and for a little year-end review. I'll be spending a few days with my family and friends and I hope you can all get to do the same. I've been looking back at my year and have summarised things below in a little list:
* 182 blog posts published
* 23 podcast episodes and December has been my best-ever month with over 100 listens!
* Lots of books read and inspiration gathered - I have a partial reading list https://richardwbown.com/resources/ and this will be updated early in the new year
* One talk given at the CTO Craft conference - a lot more planned for next year including my first online training and workshops
I hope that 2022 has been good to you and that we'll be able to talk a lot more about software delivery, architecture and legacy in 2023. Until then - I wish you a very peaceful and restful end of 2022.
Richard
The Social Legacy of Code
Published on December 23, 2022
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When does legacy code first appear? How does working at the limits of our abilities (or when we are constrained) affect the quality and supportability of the code we write? I was struck by these thoughts while browsing the subreddit for the Advent of Code. There was one thread called “AOC 2022 is destroying my …
Advent of Code 2022: Into The Valley of Self-Doubt
Published on December 21, 2022
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Personally, one of the most fascinating things I find about the Advent of Code is when you hit your particular “wall”. When you think you can’t possibly go any further and you get frustrated and start to doubt yourself… if you’re participating, did that happen to you yet? So, the puzzles start off reasonably straightforward. …
Do You Still Need ITIL and ITSM?
Published on December 18, 2022
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Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) and its subset Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) are best practices that have grown to become essential foundations of corporate IT. In banks, insurers, energy companies, infrastructure companies and even retailers, IT change control processes are implemented in ITIL and ITSM. Often however these best practices are elements of overlapping …
The Human Engineer
Writer, software engineer, author of Human Software. Thinking about the humans behind the systems.
The After (at the back) I finally headed back to work this week. Over the last few months, I've often felt like I was going around in the circles and that, in fact, was quite close to the truth. I first posted on LinkedIn that I was "Open to Work" at the start of November it's taken about six months to land a new gig. Why so long? A few things. I'm older, there's AI, and it is a tough market but at the beginning I certainly had plenty of interest both from the network and from recruiters....
It's amazing how dependent we are on paperwork even in 2026. I spent a few hours this week printing forms, signing them, scanning them, uploading them. Automation has brought us so far ... and yet. I tried to use Claude to help me design some shelves above the washing machine and honestly it was easier just to use my own head. AI is sometimes an exhausting tool to use. One of those forms was for a new job — starting in a couple of weeks. More on that soon. The bigger news: Human Software has...
Conference season hit Amsterdam last month with the global juggernaut that is Kubecon but I eschewed the noise of that particular enormous techie event and went instead to the writer-friendly event "Stories Unfold" at Amsterdam's OBA theatre. This was a very pleasant evening giving a selection of self-published and traditionally published authors a stage to share the stories behind their books and also highlighted a new compilation of short stories. The audience was very much made up of...