September 23, 2017

I mentioned endpointing yesterday. I’m always using geepaw-isms & expecting people to know what I mean. Endpointing is over-focus on eventual destination. In s/w, it’s seeing development as a long trip to a known destination on a known map. John Winthrop, a few centuries back, used "the city on the hill" to describe an endpoint, in his case for the puritan colony. The metaphor, of a trip to a place, is as natural as any human expression. But it contains […]

Of all the bad advice the geek trades inherit from over-simplified manufacturing & engineering, perhaps the worst: "avoid changing code". Take a minute, and think of all the things the trade does to avoid changing code. Virtually every element of "big design up front" policy is based in this view. Long stretches for analysis, longer ones for design. Planning cycles that extend years into the future. Years. I am not exaggerating for effect. Years. Contract-like specifications, database designs that start