This primarily a brain dump, which is good, because it's a cleanser, but will not be conclusive, maybe in our lifetimes. I note some particular passages: > Pe

This primarily a brain dump, which is good, because it's a cleanser, but will not be conclusive, maybe in our lifetimes. I note some particular passages: > Perhaps as a consequence, we’re swimming in acronyms, magic metrics, and methodologies, but not a lot of rigorous systems thinking. Performance along sustained, abstract effort is far from rigor. Measuring it causes a wave collapse so to speak. > Devs are systems thinkers. Our job is to model and build systems, and we often draw out diagrams and schematics to illustrate how those systems work. But when it comes to our own work, we are letting others draw the pictures—and they’ve done a poor job. This is systemic. The trenches don't build themselves. And we don't get to decide when to charge at the same time. > that feeling of flow can be quite the gateway drug. But many get stuck in the second graph when they code professionally, and that is a great source of developer misery and lost productivity. No comment here, just interesting. > productivity Is a loaded term. > Software development is at its core an innovative endeavor. Now we're cooking. > The goal is to produce new and useful knowledge. If only SaaS would stop playing mind games with each other. > but iteration frequency. We might call this unit of quantity developer hertz No fuck off. > You can draw this out in a picture where you’ve broken down a project into different deliverables. The finished product is a pyramid of sorts, where the blocks at the bottom have to be laid before the ones on top: I choose to see software dev as a cyberpunk vertical foundation where you can scale many foundations wide, and scale many stories high, and at some point you might lean-to on high-rises to bespoke a business vertical. This of course decreases flex, but at least we have the blueprints. > The two developers have the advantage that they can build separate blocks in parallel, but their parallelism is constrained by serial dependencies (some blocks must be laid before others), the friction of onboarding to unfamiliar parts of the code, and communication overhead. Mmmm. We are getting closer to my thesis > It is to our benefit, and to the benefit of our industry and society at large, to advance mental models that reflect the reality of our work and honor its essential creativity This is why we are inconclusive, not that this piece was an oracle of The Goal, but more of a stimulant to sell more books, or transfer your thoughts to your organization. IMO, I think devs need an internal PR shield, like the DPS tank sponge, to soak critics, and communicate technical limitations, and coerce a system that bends like a tree branch. Too far and you'll snap into firewood, too little and you will only be one vertical. The PR team paints many directions, and belays the authoritative button pushers who understand only abstraction. Truly, developer salesmanship. Now available at your local MANGA shop.