Sometimes, I have to explain software development to people who are not software developers. Over the years, I have come up with an analogy that explains what software development is like and its processes. I have successfully used it to explain software development to a 9-year-old kid, including advanced concepts like cybersecurity and so forth. I figure others might benefit…

About a year ago, a Twitter user tagged me and some other programming authors in a thread where they described the barriers to accessing computer programming books in their country. I’ve been made distantly aware of these problems before—there are many countries in the world where the cost of a book in USD could be a person’s entire weekly salary.…

I have now worked in developer productivity organizations at a company with a very advanced mono-repo (Google) and a company with a very advanced multi-repo system (LinkedIn), and I have to tell you: most of the valuable properties that people associate with a mono-repo have nothing to do with how many source control repositories you have. In fact, what people…

One of the most important properties about any software system is the ability to understand what it is going to do without having to run it. This concept is usually referred to as the ability to “reason about the system.” Basically, you want to make statements about the structures, actions, and results of the system without having to see them…

There’s a point that I’ve been making to engineers recently that I realized would be valuable if shared more widely. When you do engineering work, there are different types of tasks that get given to you. Some tasks are emergencies or short-term work. We sometimes call this “putting out fires,” especially when the work relates to handling something that is…

There are three key factors to being or becoming a great programmer: awareness, understanding, and responsibility. I’ve talked a lot about the subject of understanding. Heck, I even named my most recent book Understanding Software. In particular, I’ve pointed out many times that the better you understand something, the better you will do it. However, there are two other factors…