Going nuclear

In "is AI really worth it" news, Microsoft are looking to re-open the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to help fuel the AI hype machine. They will spend US$1.6b to refurbish the plant - imagine how many lives you could save much better you could make the Microsoft Office suite with that kind of money.

I was reminded of Heather Buchel's piece last year on Web Design and engineering which had me shouting "yes, this!". Having written a lot of frontend code in my live and worked very closely with designers I found myself in furious agreement.

What happened around that time, in 2010 or so, that I mentioned? Well, the area of front-end work, which has been heavily gendered as "feminine" work, was finally being viewed as "serious" or "real" programming* because, to no one's surprise, something that is designed well is good for business. As a "real" career option for developers, now men are interested. You're welcome.

For whatever reason I came across this article by Will Larson which summaries a part of his excellent book Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track. The article is about never being wrong and provides great advice for technical leaders to get decisions made without having to impose on the wider group.

As an interesting counter point is this article which makes the case that "Staffs [engineers] exist in a de-facto system of patronage - beholden to managers with actual power." Your patron is the one that decides what archetypes you have the space to fulfil. A good read for someone like myself that is newly in a role as a Principal Engineer and still finding my feet.

Over at Tedium there's a good write up of the Wordpress / WP Engine feud which is one of the better write ups I've read on the topic I've read. Having both bemoaned Wordpress and built more Wordpress sites than I care to admit, I can't help but be fascinated by the blow-up and share the concern that it undermines Open-source projects themselves which I hate to see.