Algol 68 is the Cronus of programming languages. Cronus is the titan who fathered Zeus, an important character in the myth, but vastly overshadowed by his own progeny. Algol 68 was an important language, and had a fascinating history. This post is a combination history, lesson, and filled with quotes from people who were there.

When there are failures at a small level, like a deployment goes wrong, there’s a meeting, and a blameless post-mortem written is shared publicly. Normally this happens quickly, while everyone’s memories are still fresh. When entires projects and movements fail, the opposite happens. There are no public post-mortems, and no meetings. A couple people leave the company, some blame is privately assigned, and the rumor mill goes into overdrive. At this level, a failure can mean a derailed career.

I went to dig into some of the sources cited in Peopleware (see my previous two blog posts), and I fell in love with this 1984 article on Japan’s software industry and Hitachi Software Engineering. It’s a look into a company that feels like peak-era IBM: much bureaucracy and even more success.

Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco didn’t include a bibliography in Peopleware, so I swept through the book and produced one for curious readers.

I just finished reading that old software classic, Peopleware. The first chapter is “Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing,” and hooked me immediately.

Mark Richards runs the Developer to Architect website, and puts out a video every Monday. He has helpfully categorized them. I watched all the videos in the “Soft Skills” category and took notes.

I’ve been reading about failures in distributed computing. A lot of it is thanks to Vaidehi Joshii’s Year of Distributed Computing at https://medium.com/@vaidehijoshi . Here’s small summary of what I’ve learned.

Here are my notes for week 2 of my product management education. This week is all about metrics, goals, and strategy, with a dive into Pirate and Heart metrics,

I’ve started an online Product Management class because, I dunno, I like learning new, non-coding things related to my job. I’ll be posting all my notes here.

In the aftermath of GE’s price fixing scandal, we learned that GE executives had a culture of winking while they told subordinates not to break the law. Sometimes. Each salesperson had to interpret the word and the wink, and the occasional lack thereof, according to their own internal rules. Effective communication was, effectively, absent.