Some stories about stories, continuing from How Stories Change Things. First, a story-story from history or two. In 1900 the story of Thomas Jefferson was that he was a founder of our nation, a naturalist, and inventor, a President, and the author of some of the most stirring language about human equality ever penned in […]
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What is this thing about telling & re-telling the story until it’s the story we want? There’s back-muses, check my timeline, but I’ll offer the relevant text: "I believe we have to re-tell the story. We have to tell the story again, and again, changing it each time, until it becomes the story of bringing
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Yesterday, I spoke about thin culture, insecurity, and a possible way forward: telling and re-telling the story of us. I don’t know what will thicken the software making trade’s culture. But I know (part of) what I’m trying to do: tell the story of us, re-tell it, and re-tell it again, as many times as
I believe the thinness of geek culture is a major player in many of the ills of the trade. It is sociotechnical in impact, simultaneously affecting areas as seemingly distant & distinct as the "social" gender diversity and the "technical" iterative design. Last night, I enjoyed Virginia doing a hilarious profane rant about an incoherent
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What matters most when I’m collaborating on activity X isn’t activity X, it’s collaborating. I’ve given this MCE series a lot of thought, which is why the items appear so slowly. My take seems fundamentally different from what others seem to be saying. And it doesn’t feel like a tweak. It’s not one premise of
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In our trade, a great deal depends on the distinction between two ideas, manifested as behaviors, cutlures, practice-sets, attitudes, approaches, whatever you call it. I call these ideas "endpointing" and "nextstepping". The central thesis of endpointing: "There’s a finish line, and it’s what matters most." The central thesis of next-stepping: "There’s no finish line, and
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TSD Development: First short TDD session pushed. I said I’d start yesterday, but instead I played a computer game most of the day. https://github.com/GeePawHill/tsd This was short and sweet, so there’s just three simple points of interest, one noticed infrastructure problem, then I’ll move on to the next part. POI #1: This was textbook TDD,
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TSD Development: The first thing to do is make a thing that accepts key-value pair assignments to make a tree. Since kotlin readily supports map-like assignments, the first minor-leage case looks like this: output["key"] = "value" That resembles a map, by design, but it isn’t one. Later cases will elaborate this, but the secret sauce
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My mindfulness works in large part by way of changing my identity, my sense of "who I am". Before I even inch into this, I just gotta remind you that you’re reading the words of someone who is an obnoxious wise-cracking irreligious unspiritual foul-mouthed dirty-minded unmystical hardcore computer geek. It’s important to say, because after
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The majority of the time, my successful collaborations begin deep within me, and so do my unsuccessful ones. (Part of the reason I’ve been so quiet these days since first talking about collaboration has been finding a way into my take. What is the most important story? How can I tell it? What advice, if
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