Aug articles

Simplicity is the Highest Form of Quality

I've been thinking about which measure of quality excels above all the rest and I can't help leaning towards simplicity. Of course, if a system is error-prone yet simple, it's not quite as simple as we expect it to be. Therefore, simplicity only counts when we are dealing with clean …

The Impartiality of Scientific Research

The scientific method's strength is its ability to lead to conclusions objectively. However, the immediate consequence of this is that by avoiding subjectivity it unwittingly assigns equal significance to every result. This is not to say that all results have the same value; rather, by not advocating any particular …

Design, Development and Testing Decoupled

The job title 'software tester' suggests the economic benefit of deferring software testing:after development is concluded, to a third party, not the person who wrote the code, andat the interface level.I've noticed that this job has grown in popularity and that it often does not require …

Paid to Think

Are you paid to think? Does your employer have you on the payroll, not just for your manual participation in some process, but for creative and original ideas? Then you are a knowledge worker in the pure sense. Knowledge work is nonlinear by design. It is impossible to guarantee a …

Great Quotes

“If you don’t at least occasionally contradict yourself, your position is not nearly complex enough.” - Terence McKenna

Django and Application State

Ever since I started writing applications in Django, one of the things that has perennially troubled me is the lack of awareness that Django apps have for application state. There is no interface by which a developer can express application state. While the framework does a remarkable job of capturing …