Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Much of the jargon we use doesn’t make sense. If we didn’t use the nonsense, no one would understand us. We use jargon. I work in computers, and we are one of the worst offenders of jargon in communication. The jargon is nonsense. If I used real words, however, no one would […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is easy to use vocabulary that is popular at this moment. It is a bit more difficult to explain the situation in plain English. That exercise, however, is often well worth the effort. Here is some popular vocabulary in the endeavor of software development: It’s nice to toss out one or […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We often use the vocabulary and ceremonies of a prescribed practice without actually doing anything worthwhile. Daily standup, peer review, prototype, minimum viable product, agility, AI, agent, etc.: examples of vocabulary that makes it appear as if something good is happening. Do they have a minimum viable product? Is there product much […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes it is worth the effort to identify the noun and the adjective. This is an educated guess. The word “guess” is a noun. The word “educated” is an adjective. Nouns are usually facts (a tree is a tree). Adjectives are usually chosen by a person and are subjective (what is a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I think OpenAI did this before I get around to writing this blog post, but if you want AI to succeed, stop calling it AI. There is a large part of society that doesn’t like “AI.” First, how do you pronounce “AI?” Is it “A” then “I” or it some word that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If someone asks a question in English, please answer in English. Please avoid some other private language. In recent conversations, I asked, “Your research, how far ahead in time are you working? Your work may become reality in 1, 5, 10 years?” The answer was, “TRL 4.” (see this for a translation) […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is important to use the right or correct word and avoid using the wrong word. This is an old fundamental in writing and speaking. Why am I writing about this? Because I continue to encounter professionals who make this error often. What is the right word and the wrong word? Consider […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Automation and artificial intelligence promise to take away the bane of some work and make us free for more meaningful work. Do we want that? Automation frees us from that old work that is just the same old same old. We will have time on our hands and be free for more […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Where will we go for discourse on the Internet? Semi-public groups for forums work. I like Seth Godin’s recent short essay on trust and how folks use the Internet. Godin described the early (1970s) online interaction as, “Because each of these groups were high-trust communities, it was easy to conclude that the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I don’t like the metaphor of the software “pipeline,” never have. Here is one explanation why. I recently wrote of my distaste for the metaphor of the software stack. Now I express a similar distaste for the software pipeline. Perhaps this goes back to the Unix pipe—shown with the “|” vertical bar. […]

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