“Fairness” and “justice” are not the same thing.

Fairness has to do with playing according to the rules—someone wins a game “fair and square”—without considering whether the rules themselves are just.

Fairness in a game that is rigged is still unjust. Insisting on “fair admissions” for people whose families have vastly different histories of privilege or oppression is unjust. Insisting on “fair taxation” is meaningless without a larger, justice-driven goal of reducing wealth inequality. After all, it’s perfectly fair for a bilionaire to shield their wealth; they’re playing the game as written.

Striving for justice often initially upsets people who focus on fairness, because justice often demands breaking long-standing tradition. But justice is what moves societies toward enlightenment; fairness only keeps it firmly in the past.

• #opinion

Do not rush software development.

Not even when a deadline approaches. Especially not when a deadline approaches.

Strive for consistent, persistent progress, not bursts of emergency-driven coding. When a deadline looms ahead, let it wash over you. The time to deal with that deadline lies in the past, when you still had many levers to pull. The closer you get closer to GM day, the fewer choices you get, and the more you simply have to execute the plan, however poor it looks.

Whatever you decide to do to meet a deadline, do it in a calm, deliberate manner. Don’t rush, don’t scramble, don’t cut corners. If you have to take on technical debt to meet the date, discuss it with your team and ensure buy-in. If you have to work longer hours, do it knowing exactly how much extra you’re putting in, when you will stop doing it, and what you realistically expect to get from the exercise. The return on overwork is not as great as you think.

Hitting a deadline is a shared responsibility, but it’s not shared in equal proportion. Many signals are available to project managers and program managers along the way to understand the risks of a project. The team’s ability to not miss a deadline is greatest at the beginning of the project, and smallest near the end. Therefore, short of gross negligence or sabotage, the responsibility to deliver a project on time lies on those who define and manage it, not the people who actually implement the product.

Also, all deadlines are made up.

• #FridayDevAdvice

I think one of the most important axioms that one must internalize in order to navigate the world with thoughtfulness and rationality is that there is such a thing as a shared, objective truth.

The shared assumption that naturally occurring, observable, measurable, reportable, and verifiable facts actually exist and can be communally homed into despite one’s bias, perspective, or imperfect observation is the absolute bedrock of science; but it must also drive our civic discourse if rationality is to survive.

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• #opinion

Psst, hey: hackers are not tech bros. The vast majority of hackers never become tech bros. The ethics of hacking runs completely counter to that of tech bros.

Hackers make hardware do things they weren’t intended to do. They circumvent barriers. They string together contraptions that repurpose old stuff to do new things. Hackers aren’t that interested in money; they’re more interested in showing off their skills. They love to learn and make demos and create and share free tech that other hackers then build upon. All they want is acknoweledgement and the respect of their peers.

Tech bros are parasites. They’re greedy bastards who love to erect barriers between people and tech. They extract, addict, monetize. They turn everything fun and useful into a transaction, a dopamine trap, a subscription, a surveillance tool, an advertising outlet, and a vector to extract money from labor and suppliers.

Please don’t get them mixed up.

• #opinion

I just finished Tom Nichols’ book “The Death of Expertise”. I feel like Nichols is one of those old-school conservatives (he clearly despises the Trumpist version of conservatism) who is worth listening to. Despite many rough spots in the book in which he comes across as curmudgeonly and condescending, the book’s central message is solid, in my opinion.

And that message is: experts know more about their topic of expertise than the vast majority of people, therefore you should give their opinion on that topic more authority than the layperson’s. This assertion is plainly true, but is perceived as deeply insulting by most USians today;“my ignorance is as good as your knowledge” may well be the tenet many people today cling on to.

Nichols wrote this book in 2017 and eerily predicted what would happen if we continued in this trajectory: a takeover by politicians who coddle and promote the ignorance of the uninformed masses at the expense of the prestige of expertise.

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• #opinion
• #books