My Embarrassing Response to the Biggest of Bad News — I’d occasionally wondered how I’d take life-threatening news. The sort of news that would change everything. Well, now I knew, and I was just as shocked as the doctors… The doc’s face had melted slowly from quiet confidence, through bewilderment, to obvious confusion. With eyes narrowing he had entirely lost…

My Recent Experience of the Art of Delivering Bad News — Receiving the news you have cancer was, for me, the easier part. My reaction and response to the news was more comic than fight, flight, freeze or fornication. But it turns out that how you receive the news is only half of the battle. …

How I swore off, and then was won over, by a club I simply couldn’t avoid joining — Cancer Club — In late 2021 I joined a club. Not usually one for organised collectives, and a firm believer in the wisdom of Marx — Groucho, not necessarily Karl — I had obstinately refused to date to join any club that would have me: “I don’t want to belong to any club…

Viewing Software Engineering through the lenses of People, Experiences, Platforms and Habitat — In the past I’ve struggled to explain the need to invest in software architecture, development and engineering platforms and tools, even broad approaches such as observability, data mesh, and chaos engineering. …

What are you here for? For meetings, for 121s, to keep stressed, to keep busy? for late shifts, ignoring family, for exhaustion, till dizzy? For achievement and merits, for other’s approval? For intensity, for push, for joy removal? or… For smiles, for laughter, for the easy and existential? Entirely here now, in the present, not eventual. For learning to love, who you are inside? To respect and to learn letting love be your guide?

Learning is Lost The crux of the matter, root cause on a platter, Answers with ease no learning to tease, Blame is the name of the end of the game And learning is lost by placing the shame.

How I learnt to like myself enough to prioritise recovery — I have a confession: I am terrible at recovery. Not just a little bad, not just something I am rusty at — completely, utterly terrible. This was not a problem for me for 45 years until Cancer showed up at my door (well, specifically on my tonsil). I knew I…

Coming up with Initial Solution Designs that can be Compared — “there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” — Arthur Conan Doyle. Design is at the heart of what we do in software engineering. From “Modern Software Engineering” by David Farley: “Software engineering is the empirical, scientific approach to finding efficient, economic solutions to practical problems in software”. From…

A lesson learned when waiting for scan results — “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.” Marcus Aurelius It could be the best of days, or the worst of days. In just under a month I should be sitting with the…