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How PowerPoint Became A Weapon Of Mass Destruction
Post-Structuralism and Semantic Collapse in the modern Grand Game of Software Engineering
I like a bit of philosophy, me. Something that is really quite bizarre considering that programming is all about context free grammars, deterministic flow of control, and most of all clear, exact, and unambiguous meaning¹.
Or, perhaps that’s why I do. For many of the great philosophical ideas have absolutely perfect facsimiles working just fine, interacting with each other, contradicting each other, and even sometimes agreeing with each other as a part of day to day life in the corporate grist mill of today.
I’ve touched on Nietzsche, Sartre, and even have a whole list about the subject — so it’s about time we touched on Post-Structuralism as it’s something that really is firmly rooted in the everyday life of a work unit trying to keep their head above the lava in perpetual agile purgatory.
For me an ordered design is a flowchart, a list of requirements uses clear and concise language, and a test plan is something you work through and not ask ChatGPT to generate as an afterthought, that’s pasted into a Jira ticket, repo, and open text editor without a moment’s consideration.
Equally I’d expect corporate communications to be succinct, clear, and decisive². I’d expect HR…
