A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

OK, there are not that many old time software engineers, but there should be.  Just finished the book "To Forgive Design" which is about engineering failures (of the bridge, crane, boat kind) and what engineers should and do learn from them.  The last chapter is one of the most interesting and also applies to software development. Engineering is thousands of years old and there are still failures.  Software development is only a few decades old and is somewhat still in it's free wheeling days, but generally people don't die when software fails (but there have been some cases). The bar is so low and the turnover so high that valuable lessons are lost every "software" generation (10-20 years?).  Mature (HR speak for expensive) engineers do cost more that less senior developers, but the old mistakes are re-made, the desire to push though a bad design still exists and this costs $$$. If you have worked in this profession for any length of time you may ha...

Starting a new project brings waves of emotions as I ebb and flow from optimism to pessimism and back.  I await for first growth in the code base until I feel firm in the direction and progress.  The general scope has been made but the details, oh the details.  They lay around like building a house from Ikea parts.  They are all small and minor by themselves but they all have to be put together in to a form where the project breaths to life in a not-too-scarry form, waiting to be prettied up later. With each new project is the opportunity to learn some bit of new technology that I've not used before.  Coming from decades of professional experience I get to look at the new technology, little impacted by the hype and blessings that may be heaped on it by numerous web pages and developers.  What I find is what can this technology do for my project knowing that jettisoning it is always an option for my 2nd or 3rd choices. Never get too burdened down with no...