A philosophy of software design - John Ousterhout

I read A Philosophy of Software Design about 18 months back. It's a well-structured, concise read about managing complexity in software design. I don't think the suggested approaches are applicable in all situations (and John Ousterhout says this himself IIRC), but I recognised a lot of the problems described in the book and found it provided some useful ways to articulate concepts during code reviews (eg. whether adding a shallow function is increasing complexity in a codebase, if complexity can be pulled down into an implementation, or where it's useful to have consistency in the code).

Design Philosophy Software Development

May 1 2025

 Why Understanding the Problem Domain Matters in Software Development

As software developers, we might think that our main job is to write code and create solutions. But really, our most important job is to understand the problems we're trying to solve. In this article, we'll talk about why it's important to understand the problem domain, why this helps us build better software, and how developers can get better at it.

Design Philosophy Software Development

Apr 13 2023

 Everyone Is Still Terrible At Creating Software At Scale

I have a hunch that once people saw the economic potential of software, they started looking for ways to "scale it up" and we haven't stopped searching yet.

Philosophy Software Development

Apr 11 2021

 Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) - Demanding Professionalism in Software Development

Robert C. Martin explains in his own unique style why professionalism is so important for software development teams and their managers. This event has been recorded live at an event co-hosted by Agile Quebec City and Elapse Technologies in Septembre 2012.

Robert C. Martin Software Development Video

Jan 30 2016