Black Locust Software

04/24/2026

So ... what can a manager do to avoid these problems? Maybe I'm glad I manage in a small company in which we assign projects, in part, by the developers' depth of experience in a particular part of the code.

How good engineers write bad code at big companiesEvery couple of years somebody notices that large tech companies sometimes produce surprisingly sloppy code. If you haven’t worked at a big company, it might be hard to understand how this happens. Big tech companies pay well enough to attract many...

04/09/2026

This article has a tone of regulation / compliance / auditing. Which is a poor way to look at anything.

But the problems it cites appear very real. Explainability ... why did the system recommend X? There is easily the idea that the AI is smarter than a roomful of people so ... we should pay attention. But if we don't know why it recommends what it does, we don't know whether it's brilliant or halucinating.

AI governance is now critical for enterprise automation. Learn how to enable safe, scalable AI adoption through safeguarding.

05/29/2024

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3715333/the-decline-of-the-user-interface.html

Software has never looked cooler, but user interface design and user experience have taken a sharp turn for the worse.

10/30/2023

These are some deep thoughts on C++.

If Microsoft products would better support C++, I'd follow it more closely!

At the CppCon C++ conference, the C++ creator identified the specific kinds of safety measures sorely needed in the programming language.

09/18/2023

https://bizzeh.com/the-pitfalls-of-overmanaging-software-developers/

In the fast-paced world of software development, achieving high levels of productivity is paramount for successful project completion. However, counterintuitively, overmanaging software developers can often lead to reduced efficiency and hinder the overall progress of a project. This article explore...

08/03/2023

Happy birthday, Dave.

Adversarial attack involves using text strings and may be unstoppable.

07/06/2023

https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/complex-project-galls-law/

An incremental / phased deployment is the only thing that works for complex systems.

Healthcare.gov gets a special look in this article. Why was it that the project could not possibly have succeeded, given the software company's understanding of their mandate?

Functional complex systems arise from functional simple systems. Failing to heed this advice can and will lead to disaster.

05/23/2023

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malicious-microsoft-vscode-extensions-steal-passwords-open-remote-shells/

Cybercriminals are starting to target Microsoft's VSCode Marketplace, uploading three malicious Visual Studio extensions that Windows developers downloaded 46,600 times.

02/06/2023

A rollercoaster of emotions if we've ever seen one 🎢