Can individuals write code? I think that your answer to this question will, to a large part, predict your attitude towards software engineers being asked to return to the office for all or some of their working week. …
I am convinced that banging on and on about warfare is hurting our ability to make pragmatic, cultural changes that protect our software and our organisations.
It’s dangerous to just accept metaphors as a way of describing the world. In many cases, that act of description changes the way you…
Recently I found myself wanting to express an opinion about continuous integration pipelines to my team, but I lacked the language to do it. I’ve been searching the web for days now, and asking on Twitter, and I still can’t find any good description of what I’m talking about. …
I’m extremely sceptical about the commonplace notions of “accountability” and “responsibility”. I think there is a fundamental tension between these concepts and a desire to create psychological safety on a team. …
A couple of weeks ago I wrote this line in some lessons learned from building a new digital service for the UK Government:
I’m extremely proud of how we managed to do that with an unremarkable budget and a team with multiple junior members.
It seemed to resonate. A few…
Last year, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with MHCLG as the technical lead on a project to replace the ageing Energy Performance of Buildings Register. Kev Keenoy has written a good summary of the work. …
In Asimov’s Robot series, several societies uphold the custom that robots must introduce themselves with the prefix “R”. For example, Daneel Olivaw, the humaniform robot so convincingly lifelike that it can deceive most actual humans, introduces [it/him]self as R. Daneel Olivaw.
If you’re not particularly interested in tech ethics, you’ve…
I travel a lot for work. Last year I traveled in excess of 300 days. For all of that time I was renting a place in central London, and it was a pretty great place. It was a short walk from everything I like to do in London, and I…
Excellent students in schools without a record of high attainment are getting a rough deal. We need to be more honest with children and parents about their prospects (or lack thereof) and who is responsible for them.
As a teacher on…
