The Site. Me. Latest News.
permalinkJanuary 1, 2007
The Site
This isn't a blog as such. I did try one for a while, but the disjointed look and feel of short sporadic postings just didn't do it for me. I was never that keen on keeping a software diary anyway. So it is what it is. I'll be making it up as I go along, publishing essays on software development and architecture, and the fuzzy bits between, as they occur to me. I'm working on some blog-like features though, such as direct comments, social bookmarking links, etc and these will be complete as and when my day job permits.
The Author
I'm not that big on job titles, so let's just say I work with software and computers. I've had nearly all the jobs there are to have in my twenty years in software development, but ended up in architecture. Probably because it's the one area I think is either done very badly or wilfully misunderstood.
My background is in operations - I was a unix performance consultant early in my career, then went into development, on to architecture and then to management. Each time I thought I'd be able to get to the culprits behind bad IT, and fix things. My conclusion, for what it's worth, is that it's mostly management's fault. But I like the field of architecture best because if you can do it well, and remain thoroughly practical, you can see amazing results.
Latest News
I left my last permanent job in February 2007, after the company I worked for was taken over by a bigger one who seemed hell-bent on ruining anything good we'd started. But it did inspire me to take a big chunk of time off and get into Ruby and Lisp and explore some things I'd always felt needed to be said about why IT has seemingly self-destructed in the last ten years.
I'm developing an idea around what I call idiomatic architectures - those that work like businesses would work if there were no information technology at all. It's a hard concept to describe precisely because everyone's would be completely different, even companies in similar fields. But it does put fads like SOA into proper perspective.
I love software technology and what it can do, and I still have that they-pay-me-for-this? feeling about it. But it's hard not to feel worn down by the armies of the incompetent who don't get (grok) it, or just aren't bothered enough to use a bit of common sense to get something good done.
This is a truly beautiful field to work in. So few understand just how beautiful, and fewer still see the beauty that could be.