A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

Every day I fight complexity.  When I look at code and when I write code, I am always questioning myself about the complexity of the code.  I look at the reasons that I find code difficult to work with our understand. Are there hidden dependancies, multiple configurations that must be dealt with for proper operation of the code, is the layout and naming confusing.  All of these factors (and many many more) are what I deal with on a daily basis.  If I find something difficult then how will others find it months or years later? My goal is to reduce the complexity of any code that I design or write so that it's design and implementation are as transparent as possible to the  operational logic that is the main purpose of the code.  This is the end goal, to provide code that does what it's supposed to do with as little impact on the development process as possible. It's not about being smart.  It's not about being super-duper fast.  It's not abo...

Long ago I understood that my skill set was finite and no matter how I wanted to learn other skills, I had a limited amount of time for each skill and other engineers may be a better choice for some tasks.  It's this acceptance that it requires a mix of skills and knowledge that makes a project successful. Many times I moderate my self in discussions when I feel that I do have the expertise and knowledge of a topic to provide help in moving a subject forward.  The difficult part for some people is knowing when their comments are moving a process forward -vs- toward their own agenda or just to be heard.  Expertise is not just about the mastery of a topic but the looking at a topic from multiple directions.  An example of this could be the design of a website.  A graphic artist can make a site that is stunning but not usable.  In this case the graphic artist needs input from an operational expert on the usability of a design.  The factor of maintaini...