Category Archives: Thoughts on the World
List
Abstract
One+Abstract
Review – Enterprise Integration Patterns
I’ve just posted my review of Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolfe’s excellent book on Enterprise Integration using messaging, “Enterprise Integration Patterns”. Overall it’s an excellent book, and wiil probably become a “bible” for those involved in the high-level design of Continue reading
Interfaces and Document IDs – A Rant
Please forgive me if this sounds like a rant, but I’m very annoyed. Someone who should know better has without warning changed a public interface, with the inevitable effect that dependent systems, in particular my blog, have broken. The offender? Continue reading
Metropolis – a Metaphor for IT Maturity
I’ve just read an excellent paper by Pat Helland of Microsoft, in which he likens the development of cities and manufacturing in the 19th century to the development of systems and business models now. His conclusion – IT at the Continue reading
Death of the Microsoft Architecture Journal?
Does anybody know if Microsoft have killed off their Architecture Journal? I was just about to write a post linking to it, and I find the content has been moved to an archive area and all the links have changed. Continue reading
Cirrus Minor – A New Architecture Site
Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz has set up an interesting new site / blog dedicated to software architecture. Of particular note, he’s trying to put some detail on the architecture “process” which is often negelcted as a single box on the development process Continue reading
Domain-Specific Languages
There seems to be quite a lot of activity on the “Domain Specific Language” front at the moment. Martin Fowler published “Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?”, in which he concludes that the common programming pattern of setting Continue reading
The Fear Premium
In an interesting echo of my last piece (Why Software Isn’t Like Building Construction), Scott Ambler has analysed bureaucratic processes as a response to management fear about what can go wrong in software development. His conclusion is that these processes Continue reading
Why Software Isn’t Like Building Construction
Many software development and management methods are founded on a basic assumption – that constructing software is rather like building a bridge or a house. Once we’ve “done the design”, actually generating the software ought to be a completely predictable, Continue reading
Application Development Strategies
I recently attended a day of the Butler Group “Application Development Strategies” Symposium. I’ve just posted a short report on some of the more interesting discussions and presentations. Almost all of the presentations shared a reminder that we still have Continue reading
Review – My Early Life
I’ve just posted my review of this wonderfull book, by one of the world’s greatest leaders. The book is exciting, inspiring and, most of all, fun. I urge you to read it (and my review)! Continue reading
The Laws of Identity
Microsoft have just published an excellent paper by Kim Cameron discussing the characteristics of an “identity metasystem” which must evolve if we are to have proper trust in the Internet and interactions which take place through it. The paper is Continue reading
Growing a Language
I’ve just read a wonderful paper by Guy L Steele, “Growing a Language“. He argues strongly that programming languages must be “small”, but able to grow. Such a language will have a relatively simple structure, syntactic rules, and a small Continue reading
Email me
@TweetAndrewJ
Others
Thoughts on the World (Main Feed)
Main feed (direct XML)