Tag: softwaredevelopment

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#BookReview: The Magic Of Code by Samuel Arbesman

Solid Explanation Of Why Knowing The Basics Of Software Development Is Essential In Modern Life. Full disclosure up front: My degree is in Computer Science. I actually started the program at 16 years old and was already going into Programming 3 by the time I graduated high school. I spent over three years in college as a Programming 1 tutor, having never made less than a 95 on *any* assignment or test – including the handwritten final exam – in Programming 1. I was a middle school/ high school teacher for a year before spending the last 18 years as a professional software developer building everything from credit card processing applications at a Fortune 50 megacorporation to various medical billing systems to even a couple of stints at the Savannah River Site as a nuclear software engineer on various projects, including one that informed the chemical engineers of when any one of a couple dozen nuclear waste tanks ranging in size from a few hundred thousand gallons to over a million gallons were about to explode within 24 hours if they didn’t act in time.

All that to say, obviously, I love my craft. I’m a 25+ year student of this industry as well as practitioner, and I’ve learned, done, and seen quite a bit. I *know* how critical my industry is to modern life.

Here, Arbesman does a truly remarkable job of explaining to everyone *else* what I’ve known for quite some time. No matter your background outside of software development – including those non-coders inside of the more general Information Technology industry – Arbesman does a truly great job of explaining the basics of coding and why it is important to modern life – both for good and ill – in such a way that it is both easily approachable and easily understandable by pretty well anyone who can read at all.

Reasonably well documented – at least by my more recent, more relaxed standards – at 15% or so, this book explains the wonders and pitfalls of this industry in ways that will make most anyone understand just how critical it is and why it is critically important that they have at least some understanding of it… and also make those of us who have been in the trenches for quite some time come to love what we do all over again. It is both informed and inspiring, and while it doesn’t go into all of the complexities of the field, it does give a solid overview of at least a lot of the key issues in such a way that it invites the reader to discover even more about this industry.

Overall a great book for anyone, and seemingly destined to be at minimum suggested reading – if not required – in perhaps a lot of Computer 101 courses in college or even high school.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Magic Of Code by Samuel Arbesman was originally written on June 15, 2025.

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#BookReview: Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

Theory + Application And Hefty Respect For Those Who Came Before. One thing that sometimes gets lost in the world of computing – specifically among those of us who make a career specifically inside this field of software development – is an appreciation of the history of the field before us. As a student many moons ago (I finished my degree requirements just over 20 yrs ago as I type this, ugh!), one of my favorite professors, one I talk about to this day, was a guy who had gotten his PhD from Harvard in the 60s in Mathematics and had come up through the early days of computing. We could get him talking about those early eras and… magically, class time was up before his stories were. 😀 Fascinating, but yes, as students we absolutely had ulterior motives there. 😀

Getting back to this book and the contents thereof, one of the things I like about it is that it so heavily references not just fairly cutting edge research (some apparently published as recently as 2017, compared to this text’s 2019 release date), but also *far* earlier results that *still* drive this industry, including the Mythical Man Month – introduced to me by the professor I discussed above, and the connection to this text – and Conway’s Law – which was *not* a topic we studied in my Computer Science classes in college, but which proves interesting and, according to these authors, still extremely relevant to how teams are organized within computing to this day.

This book, along with Mik Kersten’s Project to Product, was recommended to me by my Group Manager as I begin to truly look into where I want the next half of my career to go, and like that book, thinking about computing and, in this case, how teams within computing are organized and communicate both within themselves and within the overall organization is a different level of thinking than I, a Senior Software Developer “crewdog” coder to this point, have ever really given any thought to… and yet is as fascinating a space as any I’ve encountered as a coder. Indeed, having read both of these texts just a couple of days apart at the end of 2023, I find myself truly intrigued by the possible problem sets at these higher levels – and how to bring my experience as a “crewdog” to bear in working within them within my organization.

Truly a thought provoking text, particularly for those who either start out wanting to go straight into IT Leadership or perhaps those similar to myself who find themselves at mid career with Leadership as one of the few remaining avenues of career progression. This is one I believe I’ll be coming back to in text form and referencing for some time, having listened to the Audible version this time (and thus having no real sense of how extensive the bibliography for this book actually is). As this one is filled with both theory *and* application, it at least provides some insight into how the theory *can* work “in the real world”, making its points all the stronger for having this blend.

Very much recommended.

This review of Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais was originally written on December 31, 2023.