The Mindset

Anyone can recognize a snowball rolling down the hill. Unfortunately, no one has ever seen the snowflake that started it.

Soon after the extinction of punch cards, when programming became a task one could do using a personal computer, a new natural phenomenon was discovered. It seemed like software has a tendency to behave differently when executed on different machines. What seemed like an arbitrary behavior at first was then found out to be consistent […]

Sometimes you hear managers use magic arguments, which seem to rebut any argument about the need for improvement. The beauty of these arguments is in their generality: they seem to fit any discussion on any issue and always explain why things should stay as they are.
As a service to the new generation of managers, […]

A classic.

Originally, the title of a paper by Fred Brooks suggesting software development is forever doomed to be a complex, unproductive and error prone task.

Until a while ago, this phrase was used mainly by managers trying to justify the quality of the work they are supposed to be responsible for. This usage was widely spread, […]

While the origins of this phrase are not clear, it is widely accepted that the most probable place to find it is in the support knowledge base of a well-known software company, which would have copyrighted it if she could. The reason this sentence cannot be effectively copyrighted is that it is an essential part […]