Reusability in Coding, What Does It Mean?

I remember when I was first learning the art and science of software engineering, a really big part of almost all of the techniques was around “reusability”. I suppose even then schedule overruns were fairly common (and given that Brooks’s The Mythical Man-Month was published in 1975, I suspect I’m right), and it was assumed […]

Career Advice, or “I want to be a programmer!”

I am occasionally asked for career advice by people wanting to get into the industry, for example, high-schoolers deciding on career choices. One situation that frequently comes up in this situation is people who love programming and want to get a job being a programmer. They ask, “How can I get a job as a […]

Zen and the Art of…Programming?

I distinctly remember a few years ago reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I recall that at about halfway through there’s a discussion on Quality. Specifically, the speaker asserts that Quality itself is not truly definable, and Quality is the breakpoint between rationality and…whatever the opposite of rationality is. One interesting thought experiment […]