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This was written at the same time as Averse to Change . I’ve been jealous of mechanical or electrical engineers who can point at the direct material cost of their design, that concrete dollar amount, and say, that’s how much it costs. They gloat about redesigns that result in the same functionality but with a reduction in direct material cost. They rarely even have to talk about the cost in engineering time that it took to get to that cost reduction. Once I realized what the true value of software was, I realized that we too could use a simple measure like DM cost: lines of code. Not like the horribly misguided productivity measurements of old where more lines of code was better. When you realize that the ability to quickly make changes is priority number one, you see that less lines of code is better. I like this because it’s a lot like DM cost, where it’s easy to count and less is more, and even just a little less is usually worth the effort. In the ...

This was written about a year ago and left unpublished because it talked about people I was working with. I like the people in the examples, despite my disagreements about they way they work, and I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so I left it hidden on my hard drive. After a conversation a couple days ago at my new job about the apparent recent death of software engineering , I was reminded of this essay that I had written. I think it needs to see the light of day, so hopefully with the passing of time since the examples took place nobody will get upset. There are certainly no hard feelings on my side because I am far from perfect myself. OK, on to the essay. Software (and the engineering that goes into crafting it) is a very misunderstood thing, especially at hardware focused shops. It is misunderstood by management, but that’s old news. I’m afraid it’s misunderstood by many of the engineers, even software engineers, as well. This leads to a lot of un...

If you have been spoiled by the developer heaven that is a well running Linux machine and you have to run windoze, this is what I’ve found that begins to almost make it bearable. You must first open file explorer (windows-e) and do Tools->Folder Options->View and then check, “Display the contents of system folders,” and uncheck, “Hide extensions for known file types.” Also, View->Details is recommended. Right-click on the question mark down near the bottom-right of your screen, left of the clock and all the icons (in the Taskbar), and chose “Hide the language bar” (or whatever the annoying thing is). Right-click on the Taskbar itself and check “Show Quick Launch” and uncheck “Hide inactive icons” On any command windows (cmd.exe, cygwin, etc.), fix the font. Click on the icon in the upper-left corner of the window and choose “Properties.” Click on the “Font” tab, and choose ...