Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

We are designing a new research project in the Developer Success Lab, and we're seeking to understand software engineers' experiences with *incidents* ! Good, bad, ugly, all of it!

Have a big story or strong POV on this? We're bringing together a small community group for a one time zoom session, to share stories and help us learn. You'll directly influence what the lab studies on this.

You can let us know if you're interested here (more details below):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuQiE0Ww1oElsWNk6a9KyEmIgqfwHdpnV5_dN9CP4qornJhg/viewform?usp=sharing

💛 Stay Gold, America

https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america

The cynic pays hidden costs:

- Every "impossible" they declare becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
- Every dismissal builds walls against opportunity
- Every knowing smile reduces their capacity for wonder

I appreciate all the support, and just wanted to remind you all that I've been preparing for this moment for years.

I tend to excel under stressful conditions, while maintaining a healthy balance by taking every other night off from coding.

I won't waste this opportunity, and remain focused on @pixelfed during this historic moment!

Admins, users and even press are free to mention me, I'm here to serve you!

Remember that ❤️

#pixelfed #loops #fedidb #sup #pubkit #fediverseInfo #activitypub

i always keep this post in mind when talking about mastodon with civilians

@trishalynn ...I think it is a nice idea to imagine our events and spaces having multiple intensity levels, and valuing those equally. Also because of my lung condition I literally can't speak loud enough to be heard in a massively loud conference hallway or suffer a lot of pain if I try to and so I have learned a lot from being a person who just says well, you can find me out on the street!!!

I have many much smaller but more meaningful conversations :)

@trishalynn I have felt so objectified and shuttled around like a tool in some scenarios when I've been a speaker, so much more than I ever expected from supposedly professional events. It's been really agonizing to have to interrupt that flow and that social pressure to ask politely about obvious needs, which I have done, but sometimes received sneering in response! Including from like, Famous Dudes in Tech Organizing a Beloved Conference!

With profound sadness, I share that we've lost our good friend and colleague Brendan McAdams (@rit ). A brilliant programmer and cherished member of our community, Brendan was a core contributor to Perl and someone who stood firmly by his principles throughout his career. Please boost so others may know his name and legacy. (1/8)

Over the past year, I’ve discussed “AI as a junior employee” as a near-term goal and “AI surpassing humans at all intellectual tasks” within my lifetime. Now, the industry treats the first as reality and the second as imminent.

What is troubling is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone thinking about the ramifications beyond businesses planning how they’ll replace people with workers. So we’re either hoping the industry is wrong or societes are in for a rude awakening.

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/prophecies-of-the-flood

The Rust ecosystem is amazing, but it can be hard to discover new crates. Today @ahl and I will be joined by our colleagues @mycoliza and @rain who will offer their wisdom and walk us through some crates you should know. Join us, 5p Pacific!

https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1328411346429018236

My TED talk on how cheap solar is changing the world, or at least Pakistan, South Africa and California. And how difficult it is to get good data on solar.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jenny_chase_solar_energy_is_even_cheaper_than_you_think?subtitle=en

Ran across a good piece by Ken Shirriff about cargo cults. I actually had no idea what the history of the term or the specific point that Feynman was making.

The only part I might disagree with is the definition of "cargo cult". To me what it has become short-hand for is an entire ecosystem of decision making driven primarily by fads where the person advocating for the thing doesn't understand why it would be better or worse. Closer to Feynman's original idea, it is a metaphor which includes all the misguided rewrites and migrations where the actual underlying problem wasn't fully understood, instead a team wanted to stop using x and start using y and basically hoped (with no logic backing up this decision) that they would solve the problem by proxy.

What would probably make more sense would be to break the idea into two different pieces. We could probably replace "cargo cult" in the actual writing of code with "Programming by Coincidence". You don't understand what the pieces do or why they work. You aren't capable of refactoring the code base because you aren't confident you would be able to recreate the existing behavior. Effectively you are just copy/pasting code that looks roughly correct from the internet or an LLM and then hoping it works. If it stops working, you have no idea why because you don't know why it worked in the first place.

On the architecture side of things I think "fad-based infrastructure" would probably cover what we intend better.

Anyway well worth the time to read it. https://www.righto.com/2025/01/its-time-to-abandon-cargo-cult-metaphor.html #tech #programming #devops

Someone is going to get burned with so many people running around with their hot takes all willy nilly like that.

This is a classic that most of you probably recognize! The Legend of Giants by Natalia Rak in Białystok, Poland.

I made a collection of this and some lesser known wall paintings by her. They are here!: https://streetartutopia.com/2025/01/12/natalia-rak-the-muralist-turning-walls-into-masterpieces/

You may be thinking to yourself wow I wonder if anyone has ever directly studied brilliance beliefs on software teams and empirically measured them at scale with a couple thousand real developers & 700+ leaders and produced evidence about how brilliance beliefs & contest cultures are associated with lower team effectiveness and lower developer productivity, well 💁‍♀️💁‍♀️💁‍♀️

hit your girl up I did All That And More and I consult if your org needs LESS of this "energy"

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2gej5