6 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2024
    1. The challenge with previous generations of tech—and the engineers who built them—is that they got stuck in the rigidity of systems.
  2. Mar 2024
    1. By jumping into unfamiliar areas of code, even if you do not "solve" the bug, you can learn new areas of the code, tricks for getting up to speed quickly, and debugging techniques.

      Building a mental model of the codebase, as Jennifer Moore says over at Jennifer++:

      The fundamental task of software development is not writing out the syntax that will execute a program. The task is to build a mental model of that complex system, make sense of it, and manage it over time.

  3. Nov 2021
    1. Applying Systems Engineering to Policy

      The model to the right lacks references to a democatised control of this expert-driven decision making process, which does not reflect the increased complexity in decentralized demographics in a 'system of systems' (see p. 12).

  4. Mar 2021
    1. System architects: equivalents to architecture and planning for a world of knowledge and data Both government and business need new skills to do this work well. At present the capabilities described in this paper are divided up. Parts sit within data teams; others in knowledge management, product development, research, policy analysis or strategy teams, or in the various professions dotted around government, from economists to statisticians. In governments, for example, the main emphasis of digital teams in recent years has been very much on service design and delivery, not intelligence. This may be one reason why some aspects of government intelligence appear to have declined in recent years – notably the organisation of memory.57 What we need is a skill set analogous to architects. Good architects learn to think in multiple ways – combining engineering, aesthetics, attention to place and politics. Their work necessitates linking awareness of building materials, planning contexts, psychology and design. Architecture sits alongside urban planning which was also created as an integrative discipline, combining awareness of physical design with finance, strategy and law. So we have two very well-developed integrative skills for the material world. But there is very little comparable for the intangibles of data, knowledge and intelligence. What’s needed now is a profession with skills straddling engineering, data and social science – who are adept at understanding, designing and improving intelligent systems that are transparent and self-aware58. Some should also specialise in processes that engage stakeholders in the task of systems mapping and design, and make the most of collective intelligence. As with architecture and urban planning supply and demand need to evolve in tandem, with governments and other funders seeking to recruit ‘systems architects’ or ‘intelligence architects’ while universities put in place new courses to develop them.
  5. Oct 2020
    1. Linux Memory Management at Scale

      "we had to build a complete and compliant operating system in order to perform resource control reliably"

      epic real-talk. the only people on the planet who seemed to have tamed linux for workloads. controlling memory. taming io. being on the bleeding edge, it turns out, is almost entirely about forward-progress. what can we reclaim?

      • oomd for memory protection
      • fbtax2
      • psi monitoring for io regulation
      • cgroups v2

      https://facebookmicrosites.github.io/cgroup2/docs/fbtax-results.html

  6. Oct 2019