I’ve owned this domain and basically maintained some form of “blog” for over 20 years now. And like almost every other blog out there, I’ve been incredibly inconsistent at actually writing anything. I think the issue is that I’m constantly blocked by the false belief that I need to write anything for anyone or any reason other than for myself and because I find it interesting. So now I’m going to just try to use this site to organize my thoughts about… whatever I find interesting enough to cause me to do so. ...

This week Corey Quinn wrote about what the “next million cloud customers” will need from Amazon. In the post, he warns Amazon that if they don’t provide a higher level abstraction of all of their cloud services, essentially pre-architecting industry vertical appropriate cloud architectures that will help get the many yet-to-covert companies onto the cloud, then someone will eventually show up and meet this market opportunity, eventually relegating AWS to the domain of NTT and CenturyLink; vital, yet unknown. It’s a compelling argument. But what if AWS doesn’t build this abstraction, and what if nobody else does either? ...

…it is much safer to be feared than loved because …love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. Niccolo Machiavelli (Author of The Prince and probably a terrible manager of people) I’m unaware of Niccolo Machiavelli ever trying to lead a team while building a software product, but I’m guessing if he ever tried, he was terrible. Fear breeds loathing, and if you’re loathed, you are not liked. Software engineering teams don’t need to love one another and their leaders, but they absolutely have to like them. And as a leader of a software engineering organization, it’s not just unpleasant for your team to fear you or dislike you. Fear and loathing in software engineering generates a massive productivity opportunity cost. ...

Last week, I… Read this piece on the news that Automattic, owners and operaters of the Wordpress empire, bought Pocket Casts. Which caused me to eventually find and read this newsletter item on the same merger. Meanwhile I also read this piece about Google Reader and how much many of its enthusiasts miss it (myself included). It got me thinking about what I’d recommend to Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, if I were running the Pocket Casts product strategy. ...

This piece has been making the rounds among tech heads this week, and there’s one key point made by the author that I wish I could make to every stakeholder in every organization on the planet at once rather than having to explain it here and there as I encounter them personally. The problem with code, in general, is that it rots. There is no shortage of perfect code in the world. Perfect code is written every day. Probably every serious software developer has written perfect code several times in their career. The problem is that perfect code is temporary. Time ticks away quickly, and the perfection of the code decays. Perfect code is not impervious code. ...

The last couple of weeks, I… Listened to the always excellent Postlight Podcast, in which Rich and Paul talked about Code and, specifically, Python. That lead me to… Re-read Paul’s “Ode to Code,” better known as: What is Code? And then I shared a tertiary, virtual chuckle with Rich, Paul, and Bill Gates as Bill reminded us all that when it comes to code, nothing much has changed since Bill’s coding days. Then I read this bit by Ben Thompson over at Stratechery on, essentially, how code kinda helped save the world a lot of the economy. That alone had me thinking a bunch about the nature of code and what it means for an organization. But then came… ...

I love it when I see, hear, and/or read the same themes in seemingly very different contexts. I don’t know if it’s the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon at work or just something like it, but I’m sure it’s because something’s on my mind that I notice the same theme everywhere. Young people in love see themes of love and romance everywhere. This week I keep seeing the theme of how to get yourself in the right place mentally to be productive towards personal and business goals. C’est la vie. ...

Bill Gates Doesn’t Actually Want To Tax Robots Think Less With Google Cloud OnBoard What We Can Never Know About Michael Phelps Dear IOT: Don’t Follow Pied Piper’s Lead The Really Good April Fools Idea It’s The User Experience, Stupid I Need a Smarter Trash Can

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