Harry's Ruminations

I've been a software developer throughout the "Agile Revolution."  My first team lead, back in 2001 said these words to me and I've always taken them to heart: I think the world's pretty done with us [Software Developers].  I feel like we've got about 5 years to get our act together or that's it. Apropos, that same year a highly influential group of practitioners signed the Agile Manifesto .   Amid waves of Dot-Com-Bubble-Bursting, offshoring, and right-sizing, they kept it simple:  Here's what works; apply liberally. That was 14 years ago.  In the intervening time, much like Protestantism after Luther, factions emerged:  eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework.  Characteristically, 25-year-old me thought these were all leaps forward.   At 36-and-a-half, my cynicism grows: I've seen Agile roll-out to 1000+ developers in 2 world-wide organization across different corporate and civic cultures.  I'll gladly replace Sisyph...

Ecclesiastes is Solomon's valediction as an old man.  From the purported wisest man that ever lived--gifted with wisdom from God Himself --comes a book that seems a real downer on the hollowness of nearly every pursuit in his hedonistic life. Sometimes, having worked as a developer for 16 years, I'm reminded off Ecclesiastes. With apologies to Solomon: To everything there is a season:   A time to build big, and a time to build small,   A time to write, and lots more time to sustain,   A time to break systems apart,   A time to pull systems together. A time to delete, and a time to merge. Most telling is the author's refrain:  "All is vanity! There is nothing new under the sun." It doesn't discourage me, but it does make me think:  Is this worth rewriting/redoing, or should I just use something off-the-shelf?  The thrill of just writing everything myself is gone, replaced by the understanding that whatever I write is more "mental s...

Reference:   Why Go’s design is a disservice to intelligent programmers I honestly can't decide if this article is sarcastic  praise   for #golang hitting every one of its design goals, because once you look past the ad-hominem crap, it's there: "Similar to Go, the book is easy to read with good examples and clocking in at about 150 pages you can finish it in one sitting."  Read: Go's easy to learn.  The documentation is excellent. " I’ve always thought that the developers at Google are hand picked from the brightest and best on Earth. Surely they can handle something a little more complicated?"  He misses the point entirely.  Those same devs choose to go away from the frills to get leaner and faster.  Code is a means to an end at Google, and they realize that it's going to be  read  by other developers many times more than it's written.  Simplicity and clarity surmount all else; Google's  stultifying C++ style guid...

It's 1:38 pm. But for a snowstorm on Thursday, this would be my 7th straight day at work. I'm doing things that people variously term "unwise," "strange," or "nearly impossible." I've nearly gotten them to work, but not yet.  That's why I'm here.

"Well, sir, you certainly didn't have afternoons like *this*, when you were doing the Architect Gig." Gotta love that inner critic.  There's always something . My response:  Indeed, but I didn't *ever* have weeks like last week where we found and solved problems in realtime with a team of engineers, either.  It was lonely, and devoid of the kind of dopamine-enhanced highs I got. Last week was hard.  Every day except for Wednesday, I was here 'til late.  On two nights, mine was the last car out of the parking log.   Snowpocalypse 2015 put us behind, and a Linux/PAM story that won't die put us even farther behind. I'm enjoying it, but not today.  Today, I'm just tired. Time to drive to Louisville to get Joey.

So, Maria and I are swimming. Maria tends to take after me, in that she can look at food and gain weight, and she rather enjoys food.  We both eat our emotions, and emotions we have aplenty. Right after the new year, I noticed just how crotchety I felt, even at 36 years old.  My back hurt constantly, I had little energy, I couldn't deal with stress, etc.  Maria was enrolled in swim classes last year and we found out she had limited range-of-motion in her right arm, basically from atrophy. Atrophy at 8 years old.  Yikes. The doctors recommended swimming as a low/no-impact full-body aerobic workout, and I readily agreed.  Every morning from 6:30 to 7:30 or so we're at the local rec center swimming. I've got to admit: The first week nearly killed me.  Between getting up at 5am again and just the activity of swimming < 50m was exhausting.  Right before snowpocalypse 2015, I was really questioning if we were making any progress at all.  My...

It's been a stellar couple of days for Joey's sense of humor.  Representative samples. "Yo' momma so fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells her to GET AWAY FROM DA CHOPPA!" * * * [Interior: The Combs Clan sits around the table] Whitney (to Harold): You know, when you lie, you get spots on your face. Harold: O RLY?  Tell me something and I'll lie in response. Whitney: Yeah, say 'I like titty-twisters.' Harold: I...like...titty-twisters. Joey: Now tell us a lie.