Category Archives: Systems

To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Jacques Chester

So, it’s been a while since I wrote a book review. And I have, in fact, been reading the odd book here and there. I read everyone’s favourite late-noughties manifesto The Lean Startup, which was a few good insights smothered … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Software Engineering, Systems | Comments Off

The Essence of Hayek (Part 1)

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Jacques Chester

In April I wrote a long, winding review of Drift into Failure. I was very proud of it: in the space of several thousand words I visited complex systems, fuzzy logic and the usefulness of positivistic thinking. It met with … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Economics and public policy, Systems | 1 Comment

Waltzing with Bears

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister are probably best known for the book Peopleware (unreviewed). It’s a justly famous book in my industry, containing as it does generous lashings of both wit and wisdom. Sadly, it is a book more honoured … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Software Engineering, Systems | 2 Comments

A not-so-brief aside on reigning in chaos

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Everything that humans touch eventually becomes complex, whether we like it or not. (Blog posts too. This one started out as a comparison of three competing software system alternatives and subsequently bloated into a discussion of chaos in computer systems.) … Continue reading →

Posted in Robojar, Software Engineering, Systems, Technical Notes | 27 Comments

Fat and Simple

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Jacques Chester

In my trade we commonly mention the truism that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. I bring this up because I’m about to do what every smart person likes to do: drastically simplify a … Continue reading →

Posted in Diet, Systems | 21 Comments

War and Peace and War

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Grand theories of history never quite go out of fashion. The impossible complexity of human society so cheerfully refutes our understanding that we have to fall back on intuitive pattern-matching to make sense of it (after a while, this becomes … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, History, Systems | Comments Off

Drift into Failure

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Drift into Failure, by Sidney Dekker , is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while. “Thought provoking” is usually a shorthand used by buttered-up friends of the author to mean “I agree” or “he/she provided a … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Systems | 4 Comments