It would be arrogant of me to think that I have solved the problem of large-scale software development:
It is widely acknowledged that coordination of large scale software development is an extremely difficult and persistent problem.
One of the most common antipatterns of commercial software development:
In this evil, but extremely common, mirror universe, developers branch to create features. This branch stays isolated for a long time. Meanwhile, other developers are creating other branches. When it comes close to release time, all the branches get merged into trunk.
At this point, with a couple of weeks to go, the entire testing team that has been basically twiddling their thumbs finding the odd bug on trunk suddenly has a whole release worth of integration and system-level bugs to discover, as well as all the feature-level bugs which have not yet been found because nobody bothered to have the testers check the branches properly before they got integrated.
Source: Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation, Humble and Farley, 2010.
This view is too optimistic for me, given what I know about human nature and our sinful condition:
Technological optimists believe that technology makes life better. According to this view, we live longer, have more freedom, enjoy more leisure. Technology enriches us with artifacts, knowledge, and potential. Coupled with capitalism, technology has become this extraordinary tool for human development. At this point, it is central to mankind’s mission. While technology does bring some unintended consequences, innovation itself will see us through.
Source: “The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work,” Rogaway, 2015 (PDF).
This article was how I first came across the work of Erik Dietrich. Since then I’ve had a lot of fun reading his articles on software development and office politics.
In the sense of skills acquisition, one generally realizes arrested development and remains at a static skill level due to one of two reasons: maxing out on aptitude or some kind willingness to cease meaningful improvement. … [L]et’s discard the first possibility (since most professional programmers wouldn’t max out at or before bare minimum competence) and consider an interesting, specific instance of the second: voluntarily ceasing to improve because of a belief that expert status has been reached and thus further improvement is not possible. This opting into indefinite mediocrity is the entry into an oblique phase in skills acquisition that I will call “Expert Beginner.”
Source: “How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner,” Erik Dietrich.
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