What Interests Me Most About Any Software Project
There’s a lot to talk about in the world of software and technology.
I spend much of my time talking, learning or writing about it. As professions go, it’s wonderfully immersive and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything else.
I get so caught up in the glorious details that I often forget why I got so passionately involved with writing software in the first place… to solve real problems, to scratch itches and to provide solutions that stretch beyond the confines of my laptop screen.
It certainly matters to me which programming language we code something in… but only to the extent that a good language choice makes development faster, less error-prone and easier for others to contribute alongside us.
I wrote recently about the possible benefits of choosing a serverless cloud architecture over a container-based one, but only because it may accelerate our delivery of a working product and improve the economics of running it 24/7 for whoever wants to use it.
I could debate for hours how to choose the right abstractions… but it only really matters to the extent that they model the real-world concepts we’re dealing with so we can handle them efficiently and communicate them clearly.
To be honest, it matters to me much less that we’re “Agile” (whatever your definition is), but if being that way improves the products we deliver and the time it takes us, then let’s talk regularly — but not to the detriment of all else— about being more “Agile”. Let’s solve problems in that manner, if it helps.
Migrating to — or at least nudging ourselves towards — the latest tech stack is a topic I obsess over much too often. It usually benefits the end result, or the speed and reliability of it. But being on a continuous treadmill, running after this month’s “new new” quickly sees our burn rate exceeding the benefit we’re delivering… and that’s a warning sign I’ve learned to spot.
I am incredibly interested in software, technology and how we build it in the best way we can today, but towards an end: Solving real-world problems.
So the one thing I am burning to know first about any software project is not the programming language, the tech stack, the architecture — we’ll dive into those next. But first, I want to know… “What are you building and what problem does it solve?”
