Automation and the Jevons paradox - Always good to bring in Jevon’s Paradox.
60 to 100 days to onboard a developer - Highlights from the Harness State of Developer Experience survey
Today’s survey: “State of the Developer Experience 2024,” Harness/Wakefield Research.
Most enterprises need to automate their build and deployment pipelines. This is more than just building code and automating tests (which 71% of people are not doing), but also automating governance and security checks (which 41% of developers are not doing).
In my mind, this is the number one thing development organizations should be working on in 2024, and probably next year.
That time when Microsoft bought and killed Nokia phone unit - “Barely two years after it was announced, the whole thing fell apart and Microsoft wrote the whole thing off as a tax loss.” And: “Elop was right, but his solution wasn’t.” // “Disruption” is an easy word to say, but a very difficult one to solve. // And a D&D reference! “The Nokia board rolled the dice again on hiring another non-Suomi manager, Rajeev Suri, and this time hit a double D20 in D&D terms.” (Though, I’ve never heard of a “double d20,” but, sure, probably.)
Commoditize your condiments, or, open source business models considered
Business models are fascinating. Most business models come down to a type of arbitrage, at least as I understand it. You find something you have that you can sell to someone else, crucially, at a price above what it cost you to make that thing.1 In, let’s call it, The Capatalist Upbrining, there is a major intellectual jump where you understand that the price for a think is not determined by what it cost to make it, the costs of goods sold.
6 views on open source business models
On that random person in NebraskaOpen source is important for the entire industry, sell side (especially in the cloud era) and buy side. Things would go very bad if it did not exist as method of software production and innovation. (Source: see the QED from that one xkcd.)
Open source is a bad business model, it’s very difficult to grow and it conflicts with the VC need for a big pay off.
Volo’s Culinary Guide to Icewind Dale - We talk a lot about the downside of the Internet, the web, whatever. But the existence of this as a widely available thing is an example of why the Internet is great. I mean: when would this ever exist otherwise except as some obscure zine on a magazine rack at rundown university coffee shop?
Generated images for non-generated text and video - ‘It’s only a matter of time until “generative art = spammy bullshit” will be the majority position because that’s how the economics of it are playing out. Using extruded synthetic art will not do your writing or video any favours in the long run.’ // I mean, yes, and…the idea is that in the future, the AI generated images will be so good that you won’t be able to tell. But, that is just an ideas.
Java 17 is now the favorite brew of developers, along with - “About a tenth (9 percent) of applications were using Java 17 in production in 2023, and now 35 percent of applications are using Java 17, representing a nearly 300 percent growth rate in one year. It took years for Java 11 to reach anywhere near that level.” And: “While Oracle retained the top spot in 2022 (34 percent), it slipped to 29 percent in 2023, and it’s now at 21 percent – which represents a 28 percent decrease in one year.” // Sure, but what matters more is: is Oracle making more money off Java or less?
A Letter from Paul Auster - When the rejection is more comforting than the confirmation.
Supercharged Developer Portals - Spotify Engineering : Spotify Engineering - Spotify is really going for the enterprise product thing! Most importantly, check out the legacy of the Drunk & Retired podcast with The Frontside mention.