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.
Software Delivery Club Newsletter 2023-01-06
Happy New Year!
I hope that you've had a nice relaxing holiday period and are ready to start tackling 2023. I was away for a few days over the period and came back to the office this week to catch up with some great podcasts and videos. I've linked a few below and can thoroughly recommend the John Romero presentation where he enthusiastically discusses the creation of Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake and describes 10 ways that he believes good software can become great software.
John's presentation sparked a few thoughts with me including how we make sense of all of these lists. Lists of things aren't helpful unless we can remember them. 10 things in a list is too many, the 12 agile principles are too many as well - can we get the essence of what they mean without losing specificity? I'm half way through writing a podcast episode that does just this. I want to provide a simple way of guiding your teams to software perfection.
In addition to working on that, I'm still working on my Legacy Workshop and to that end I've also created a new landing page for this work. Please check out legacyscoding.org where I'll be sharing more resources and opportunities to make the most of your legacy systems.
If you've not already checked out the Software Delivery Club podcast then please have a listen. As I've been spending more and more time focussing on Legacy Software I want to make sure that my podcast reflects this. From the next episode I'll be renaming the Software Delivery Cloud podcast to Lovin' Legacy. This newsletter will be staying the same name for the moment.
And with that I'd like to wish you a wonderful weekend, and a happy and successful 2023. Please let me know what you're up to this year in the world of software delivery.
-- Richard
Loving the Legacy Rabbit Hole
Published on January 6, 2023
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The great thing about legacy code is that it’s everywhere and it’s growing bigger by the day. This means infinite fun is to be had. Along the way, last year, I decided that legacy code and systems were the things that really got me excited. This subject gets me more interested in learning new techniques …
John Romero’s Ten Principles for Building Great Software
Published on January 5, 2023
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I discovered this incredible talk from last year by game legend John Romero. In the talk, he picks out his top ten principles for collaboration in building great software. I think these are worth highlighting and repeating and applying to the software development ‘industry’ in some way. Bear in mind that Id Software created the …
SE Radio Podcast: The Differences between DevOps vs SRE
Published on January 4, 2023
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An interesting although at times slightly breathless discussion between Ganesh Datta, CTO and cofounder of Cortex, and SE Radio’s Priyanka Raghavan. They discuss site reliability engineering (SRE) vs DevOps. They also examine the similarities and differences and how to use the two approaches together to build better software. This is fascinating because it talks from …
Can Software Engineers Fix the World? Podcast with Gene Kim
Published on January 2, 2023
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As Mr Spock would say, “Fascinating” Star Trek gets a mention in this Screaming in the Cloud podcast discussion between Corey Quinn and Gene Kim about the latter’s books, both the Phoenix Project and mainly the Unicorn Project. One of the questions about The Unicorn Project gets to the heart of the matter: “Is this …
Time to Take a Deep Cleansing Breath
Published on December 31, 2022
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You can ask yourself many things as you come to the end of one year and start another. The thing I like to do is have a fallow period – a comma in the conversation – to allow my thoughts to fully expand and reach areas that they will not usually go. I use this …
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.
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?...
Last couple of weeks, I've been rebuilding some Windows base images in order to comply with corporate patching policies. The new images are CIS hardened which means they follows guidelines set out by the Center for Internet Security benchmark. This ultimately means that the images are restricted in what they can do, what they can access, what is installed upon them by default. These security measures work in opposition to the automation we already have in place for our customers. This is the...
Aside from being a writer, I'm also an avid film and TV watcher. This week we were blessed by the arrival of Pluribus on AppleTV. It's a speculative science fiction series written by Vince Gilligan, co-creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He's someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to writing, producing and directing these incredibly successful series. More than that though, he picks the best people and directs them with ease. Here's a bit on when Vince Gilligan knew...