Short-circuit evaluations of logical expressions can cause problematic behavior, and so can short-circuit expressions in human communications. In stressful times such as looming deadlines or other project troubles, it’s easy to slip and start taking shortcuts in our communication and overall behavior. The closer we live to survival mode, real or perceived, the less we…
Estimates and the Fog of War
A lone engineer stands at the city gate. She built a subway station here three years ago on a sunny day. On this dark, foggy night, she wishes her flashlight shone brighter, her map was up to date and that the neon signs of Ginza weren’t powered by a frozen yogurt stand ten miles away….
Code and Music, Timelines and Lifelines
When I kick the bucket drum, I’ll leave behind three creations: my spawn and 10 buckets of bits. One bucket full of code and another brimming with notes. /* No, not these kinds of notes. */ Perhaps the artifact in this Game Over scene will instead be more akin to a single, large, loud volume…
Disaster at the Ready
At some point, your co-worker (peer or otherwise), or even an entire team, will massively screw up. Or you will. Perhaps you already have. If the latter is true, congratulations – you’re in a great place to make a positive difference. I’m going to assume, perhaps barring certain egregious transgressions, that you already manage failure…
The Mithril Border: Beautiful Constraints
Stravinsky talked about the concept of creative limitation in music being useful in order to reach new and different results. There have been TED talks on limitations as an upside. (LaaU?) Publications like Harvard Business Review and Forbes have written about constraints breeding creativity. Since the concept became somewhat popular, it can sometimes feel like…
Pros and Cons Are Inseparable
While my perception of my own knowledge path has been something like “I know nothing” -> “I know everything” -> “I know nothing”, engineers at any level can become overly convinced that their own approach is the correct one. A junior engineer straight out of school may be overly biased toward approaches taught there, which…
Why Does This Exist and What’s Up With the Name?
The fact that I’ve owned irming.com since the last millennium and not done anything useful with it is probably not centered but fairly extreme. Thus, on its 25th anniversary of uselessness, which surely warrants some kind of award from the ICANN or something (hook me up), here we are. The term “execution path” part is…