Category: Article
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LEGO and Software – Variety and Specialisation
Since my first post on LEGO as a Metaphor for Software Reuse, I have done some more homework on existing analyses of LEGO® products, to understand what I could myself reuse and what gaps I could fill with further data analysis. I’ve found three fascinating analyses that I share below. However, I should note that…
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LEGO as a Metaphor for Software Reuse – Does the Data Stack Up?
LEGO® products are often cited as a metaphor for software reuse; individual parts being composable in myriad ways. I think this is a bit simplistic and may miss the point for software, but let’s assume we should aim to make software in components that are as reusable as LEGO parts. With that assumption, what level…
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The Lockdown Wheelie Project, Part 3
In Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve wheelied over 17km. Not all at once, though. Over three months, I’ve spent 90 minutes with my front wheel raised. I’d like to keep it up, but as lockdown has gradually relaxed, and routines have changed, so have I landed the wheelie project, for now. With all that data collection though,…
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More Sankey for Less Confusion?
Confusion Matrixes are essential for evaluating classifiers, but for many who are new to them, they cause, well, confusion. Sankey Diagrams are an alternative way of representing matrix data, and I’ve found some people – who are new to matrix data, like business domain experts who are not experienced data scientists – find them easier…
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The Lockdown Wheelie Project, Part 2
I now have an AI coach for my wheelie project. Coach has seen over 1,500 of my wheelies, and reckons they can tell pretty quickly whether my effort will be wheelie good or bad. Coach also fits on my phone, so they come on rides when I want real-time advice. Read the full article over…
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Maths Whimsy
Time to make for a home for those occasional mathematical coding curios. I’ve kicked off with an analysis, using various Numpy approaches, of the gravity field around a square (or cubic) planet, inspired by a project my children were working on. If you’ve ever wondered, this is what gravity looks like on the surface of…
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The Lockdown Wheelie Project
“It’s Strava for wheelies,” my lockdown project, combining hyper-local exercise with data analytics to track and guide improvement. Practising wheelies is a great way to stay positive; after all, it’s looking up, moving forward. Read the full write-up over on Medium at The Lockdown Wheelie Project.
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Scaling Change Spoiler
When software engineers think about scaling, they think in terms of the order of complexity, or “Big-O“, of a process or system. Whereas production is O(N) and can be scaled by shifting variable costs to fixed, I contend that change is O(N2) due to the interaction of each new change with all previous changes. We could…
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The life-changing magic of tidying your work
Surprise! Managing work in a large organisation is a lot like keeping your belongings in check at home. Get it wrong at home and you have mess and clutter. Get it wrong in the organisation and you have excessive work in progress (WIP), retarding responsiveness, pulverising productivity, and eroding engagement. Reading Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing…
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No Smooth Path to Good Design
The path to good design is bumpy, as we will demonstrate with four teapots. (Yes, teapots. Teapots are a staple of computer science and philosophy.) The path to good design matters, because if you are trying to build a design capability, the journey will be smoother if you understand that the path is bumpy. Leaders…