Some things have been bothering me for a while now, about programming as an activity and the software engineering discipline from which it follows. As usual, I’ve been struggling for a while to articulate the insights that I’m grappling at. But let me finally commit to trying, at least. I’ve been spending a lot of time with infrastructure in my current role, wrangling automation, troubleshooting environments, configuring and optimising builds. Operating machinary that pushes buttons and pulls levers on other machines ad infinitum. Read more

Knowledge work can have some pretty tricky characteristics that renders it distinct from physical work. For one, it defies quantification. While chefs, carpenters and other tradespeople can see their efforts take shape into concrete, material output, the knowledge worker is not so fortunate. Our raw materials are intangible - what tools could we use to manipulate them? Likewise, our output can seem quite ephemeral - did the thing we produced actually add value, by what measure1? Read more