Once again, I am bringing you only links and funny pieces of text.

Relative to your interests

• Measuring Engineering Productivity, at Google, circa 2020 - “If the decider doesn’t believe the form of the result in principle, there is again no point in measuring the process.” // Some great advice in here about improvement programs. Come up with metrics and needs from the (economic/strategic) stakeholder who has the power to make changes. Ask them what metrics they care about and study those. Otherwise they won’t care about the results. // Also, this is why you should seek out pre-meetings with The Bosses when they ask you for reports. You want to find out what numbers they actually care about, and what actions they can take afterwards.

• Docker Launches 2024 State of Application Development Report - Survey for future newsletter analysis.

• PDF to Podcast - Could be super cool.

• How CIOs can ease the generative AI transition for developers - “AI-powered coding tools are expected to become fairly ubiquitous within enterprises in the next four years, according to Gartner research. The analyst firm predicts around three-quarters of software engineers will add AI coding assistants to their workflows by 2028, a considerable jump from the 1 in 10 enterprise developers leveraging the tools early last year [2023].” And: “why would I hire junior developers who can write crummy code when I can have a generic AI do it for me.”

• The breath of the gods - Video influencer technique: have the video format/style match the medium. // “I have uploaded a different version to the great algo­rithmic mills, where the breath of the gods upon a scrap of video can propel it” And: “The smile, with the wince: that’s the overall expression of the 2020s internet.”

Original Content

In this week’s Software Defined Talk podcast: “we discuss the AI Hype Cycle, Apple Intelligence and other announcements from WWDC. Plus, Coté concludes the episode by using as many phrases as possible from Taylor’s Urgent/Optimistic Meeting Matrix.” Also, why having a picnic with ChatGPT is like talking about concrete.

Watch the unedited video recording, or listen to it as a podcast.

Wastebook

• “It’s fun to talk about failure when you’re no longer a failure.” ROtL #539

• “young folks that bring some of that drama” are not invited in dine, but the “grown and sexy” are welcomed. Here.

• “If you can’t create photorealistic images, you can’t generate deepfakes or offensive photos of people.” Here. // As we develop in this week’s Software Defined Talk, Apple’s AI stuff feels non-threatening (to humans). In contrast, most other AI things seem threatening to people’s jobs and abilities.

• “There is a big difference between tech as augmentation versus automation. Augmentation (think Excel and accountants) benefits workers while automation (think traffic lights versus traffic wardens) benefits capital. LLMs are controversial because the tech is best at augmentation but is being sold by lots of vendors as automation.” Dare Obasanjo, via.

• “I’m searching for something. That email from someone that will sweep me off my feet. The job offer. The opportunity that gift wrapped from the universe just for me.” Here.

• “sharing the enormous cuts of beef bonded our group.” Good steak in Nuremberg.

• Monte Cristo: what if a grilled cheese sandwich, but unhealthy.

• “The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.” Evelyn Waugh, via.

• “My neighbor’s dog barks in my RAM.” Borg chatter.

• “with 1970s sausage fonts thrown in.” Moron font.

• “There’s nothing worse than selling things to people.” Noah.

• If you have no sleeves, there’s no danger of people seeing your heart.

• Automating a series causal dependent activities that previously required a meatware-buffer.

• “Think before you act, and then you will be forgiven.” TJ Watson, the IBM fella.

• You create, we computer.

• “The undisputed leader in workforce agility”

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

DevOpsDays Amsterdam, June 20th, speaking. SpringOne/VMware Explore US, August 26–29, 2024. SREday London 2024, September 19th to 20th.

Discounts. SREDay London (Sep 19th to 20th) when you 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. And, if you register for SpringOne/VMware Explore before June 11th, you’ll get $400 off.

Logoff

I gave a new talk this week, at NDC Oslo: my round up of developer productivity metrics and fixes. Here’s the live streamed version (if that link messes up, it’s at timecode 7:30:20), I’ll put a link here when the stand-alone cut comes out. Also, here’s the slides.

I build up a case that focusing on “inner loop” developer productivity is fine, but you’ll get much better gains focusing on putting CI/CD in place and using a centralized platform. Hey! Who guess it’d be aligned with my commercial interests. Also, I believe it, which is handy for my ethical wellbeing. I’m giving this talk at DevOpsDays Amsterdam next week, and I’d like to think I’ll evolve it a lot. Maybe I will.