Modern-Synthesis

Change Harvesting vs Rework Avoidance

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

Let’s compare and contrast the RAT (Rework Avoidance Theory) model of software development with the CHT (Change Harvester Theory) model. The differences are multiple and pronounced, so this may take us a while. It is not rote for me: there are many more important things to be doing right now than geekery. I’m actively supporting my friends & family out there seeking equity in the streets. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black lives matter. I want to […]

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Iterative User Value in Flows

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 5 minutes of reading

A flow app, one that steps the user through an acyclic graph, typically gathering info at each stage, can be built to provide iterative user value by gradual refinement. Let’s look at how that’s done. Before we get into it, for me, and maybe for you, too, geekery right now is not the most important story. It’s just comfort food. If you’re out there working for change today, I support you wholeheartedly. Black lives matter. Stay safe, stay strong, stay

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The Correlation Principle

Change Harvesting, Programming, Modern-Synthesis / / 8 minutes of reading

The correlation principle says that our productivity is tightly correlated with the internal quality of software. The two go up together, and they go down together, and you can’t trade away the one to get more of the other. Let’s talk it over. I remind us that geekery isn’t the main story right now, though you and I can use it as comfort food. Keep working on changing the world. We can do this. In fact, we’re the only thing

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Iterative User Value

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

How do we iterate user value? How can we follow the "more smaller steps" approach and still deliver a positive experience for the user? Today let’s look at some ways to approach this problem. It’s important for me to remind you that, for me and many others, working for equity in the world is far more important than geekery. I regard this as a side-story. Stay safe, stay strong, stay kind, stay angry, please, because black lives matter, and we

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A Question Of Humbling Proportion

Geekery, Modern-Synthesis, Coaching / / 2 minutes of reading

The road to hell is lined with convenient parking spaces. I said recently that we need fewer addresses and more routes. These slugs are attempts to get at what I think keeps going wrong for us — in the trade, possibly in entire culture. There are numerous systems for software development out there competing in mindspace. (Stock word for these is "methodology," but I resist. I’ll call them "methods", as to my reading, methodology is the study of methods.) Every

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Decomposition Rage Tweet Explained

Modern-Synthesis, Geekery / / 5 minutes of reading

Yesterday’s irritated blurt was a matter of feels, not an attempt to offer insight or ideas. I got some queries about it, so let me wipe that slate and be a little less irritated. For now, anyway. 🙂 In geekery — in all tool use beyond a certain point, but my focus here is on the modern software development synthesis — we confront problems that have a size that is "too big to eat all at once". This is hardly

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Showing Code Every Day Or Two

Geekery, Modern-Synthesis / / 8 minutes of reading

Let’s talk a little bit about showing your working code to your product person. A basic recommendation, which will seem strange and likely freak you out the first time you hear it. Look to show your new stuff every day or two. I want to address here both the how and the why. The why has three parts: 1) just-in-time tuning, 2) food-pellets. 3) cross-specialty connection. Just-in-time tuning is just feedback. But I used an odd word, as i’m wont

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How The Modern Synthesis Tackles Blurgs

Geekery, Modern-Synthesis / / 6 minutes of reading
This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series Blurgs

If we’re living now and always have been in the Age of Blurgs, then our strategy might change accordingly. Before I go to some ideas from the modern we got "The Age of Blurgs", and we got "Blurgs: Try Harder Won’t Work". We need some better ideas, and the modern synthesis has some. Today I want to focus tightly on "just the coding". Coding’s not all the work doing software for money requires, not even most of it at the

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Blurgs: Try Harder Won’t Work

Geekery, Modern-Synthesis / / 5 minutes of reading
This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series Blurgs

If we’re living now and always have been in the Age of Blurgs, then our strategy might change accordingly. Before I go to some ideas from the modern synthesis that are targeted at blurgs & blurging, tho, I want to point at one thing that won’t work, and why. What won’t work is "try harder", and why it won’t work is "because humans". What I mean about just trying harder not to blurg being ineffective as a plan: blurging is

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Please Go Find Out

Geekery, Modern-Synthesis / / 2 minutes of reading

So. I dropped out of the conference scene by and large for a few years for a variety of reasons. The last couple of years I have been returning to it. I’m just home from two conferences in three weeks. I am not an extrovert, at conferences, I like to hang around with individuals or small groups. And I am drawn to smart weird people, because reasons. I am one of those people who prefers intimacy and authenticity in my

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