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Just a guy floating around the fediverse, hoping to read some fun stuff along the way. Check out my mastodon too: @cd24@sfba.social
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John has read 0 of 12 books.
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John wants to read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life …
John wants to read No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings
John wants to read Wicked by Gregory Maguire (The Wicked Years, #1)
Wicked by Gregory Maguire (The Wicked Years, #1)
Wicked is a revisionist exploration of the characters and setting of the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by …
John commented on Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
"Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe …
The pace really picked up around 25%! The start laid out a good background, and now the threads are coming together!
John started reading Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. …
John finished reading The Systems Bible by John Gall
John wants to read Design for a Brain by William Ross Ashby
Referenced in chapter 28 of the systems bible
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning How not to solve problems
In the face of [problems that are not simple], persistence in information gathering is not uncommonly used as a means of not dealing with a problem
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 117)
This is, perhaps, the most common tool I’ve observed for delaying software work
John wants to read This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in …
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning Section D 20
In contrast, a poorly–functioning system begins to generate increasing numbers of messages, often shaped around such questions as “what went wrong?“, “How far along is task X? “, And especially, “why don’t we have better feedback? “ As a system sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of unfinished tasks, the business of exchanging messages expands, exponentially, until at last the non-functioning system is completely occupied with its own internal communication processes.
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 105 - 106)
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning Section D 19
Every picture tells the story – but not the same story. … The meaning of a communication is the behavior that results.
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 100)
Well, simple and it’s construction. This fact has taken me nearly all my 30 years to understand, and I’m not quite convinced that I have finished.
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning Section C 17
We conclude: colossal Steven’s foster colossal errors. Indeed, in such settings: colossal errors tend to escape notice - and, if noticed, may even be excused.
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 89)
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning Section C 16
As the system becomes ever more highly specialized, the simplest tasks mysteriously become too difficult.
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 86)
John quoted The Systems Bible by John Gall
Content warning Section C 11
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
— The Systems Bible by John Gall (Page 63)
This has been true in my experience as well. Often, the growth in complexity leads to fear of loss of features, but starting with something simple and adding complexity is the only way to produce stable results.
A “feature complete rewrite” is a fools errand. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try new things. Instead we should try new, simple, things when the system becomes too complex to work in.