In the beginning....

For 30+ years of his life, my father was a professor of philosophy at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. As part of his profession of teaching 18-22 year olds that diverse and expansive field, he had a large personal collection of books. Included in that collection was a copy of Arthur Schopenhauer’s “The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims” which contains suggestions from Mr. Schopenhauer on how to view and conduct your life. Regardless of your opinions on him as a person or the content of those works, which I would recommend reading, the idea of a consolidated selection of experience and advice is something that I think is lacking in the world of Tech.

Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of opinions in the field of technology. Every junior engineer or language zealot will attempt to convince you that some new shiny technology or methodology should be the basis of your stack regardless of its objectively visible merits, flaws, or maturity in the field. The advice that in deficit is more broadly applicable and, in most cases, is not even specific to technology. The nearest equivalent that I can find for what I’m describing are the two most popular books from Fred Brooks, both of which should be required reading in our field regardless of whether you graduated from a masters program or a coding camp. The two, for those that may not be aware are Mythical Man-Month and The Design of Design, both of which you could argue are not really about technology, but use it as a backdrop.

The posts that you find here are an attempt to supplement what people with much as the eminent Mr Brooks have already set out from my own professional experience which has been building since 1997.