Softwhack

Death is such an ugly topic, no matter who you are.  It's depressing, messy, convoluted, and affects everyone, if they're honest about it, in some deeply personal way.  Thing is, I used to think the idea of my own death didn't affect me.  Contemplating my own death was like contemplating some other major life event, but it did not inspire any deep emotional reaction.  I guess I always hoped and kind of presumed that my death, when it happened, would mean something.  That somehow it would give back to the world something it would have otherwise lost, and would therefore make my death 'ok', or at least would come in a time and way that was acceptable to me. Except that facing death now strips me of all those illusions.  If I die of cancer (I have stage IV lung cancer), then it will render my death somewhat...well... meaningless.  Sure, maybe some insights or something I've learned while contemplating death by cancer will help someone in some vague way, but is th

I've seen more and more of a push lately to integrate programming into children's development.  The idea is a bit abhorrent to me, which may surprise you as I am full-time software developer.  Understanding what it means to be a software developer is paramount to understanding why it may or may not be a good idea to push children into that line of thinking.  This is because software development changes how you view everything around you, for better or worse, and therefore at least a cursory knowledge of who software developers are is required.  Throughout my career I've had the opportunity to observe many different types of professional developers and gain some insight into common traits they share.  To dumb down the myriad of professionals I've worked with, I could lump them into 3 types, as follows.  Understand that the labels below are stereotypes and will probably not fit perfectly a single developer out there, although I suspect they might hit close to home for m