Goodbye, Mum
In the end you think about the beginning.
I remember sweaters so thick you could use them as blankets,
each one made by hand.
I remember getting blackberry p...
January 07, 2020
Favorites
Martha’s Rules
A group I’m part of is using Martha’s Rules for consensus-based decision making.
It’s working pretty well,
and I hope the summary below will be useful to oth...
June 13, 2019
An Exchange with DataCamp
I haven’t spoken publicly about my experience with DataCamp
out of respect for Kara Woo’s privacy.
Now that she has so bravely come forward,
I can say that a...
April 15, 2019
Afraid of Change
A few months ago,
I had the misfortune to take part in an awful one-day workshop
based on an equally awful book called Radical Candor.
For those lucky enough...
November 24, 2018
Meetings
This thread on Twitter
sparked a lot of interest, so I hope it’s useful if I publish the whole section on meetings
from the upcoming revision of How to Teach...
May 11, 2018
Cigarettes and Shopify
When I was seven or eight, my teacher told my class that cigarettes cause cancer.
My dad was a chainsmoker–a pack a day, sometimes more–so that evening,
just...
May 06, 2018
Goodbye, Jeff
In the end you think about the beginning.
We weren’t close as children,
but he moved to Ottawa to start university the same year I went there for my first jo...
March 20, 2018
Just Keep Swimming
I had a conversation a few days ago with a young colleague who said (basically),
"Nothing I do ever seems to take off the way your projects do."
Coinc...
December 06, 2015
Exaptation and the Future of Software Engineering
Back in the 1980s,
we knew that software engineering was going to become mathematically rigorous
like electrical and civil engineering.
Where they u...
November 29, 2015
Daddy, Why Don’t You Ever Laugh?
We were eating dinner last Friday night when my daughter asked me,
"Daddy, why don't you ever laugh?"
Coincidentally (or perhaps not)
I had just fin...
November 09, 2015
Goodbye, Dad
At the end, you think about the beginning.
I remember being at the beach one summer,
seeing my dad dive into the lake off a log boom and thinking,
"...
September 22, 2015
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
In the beginning, there were tables:
rows upon rows,
with columns separated by commas or tabs or something more exotic.
They were elegant but limite...
June 11, 2015
Is Learning at Scale Just Another Name for Ubiquitous Surveillance in the Classroom?
Last week,
I attended an ACM conference called Learning@Scale.
It was the most depressing meeting I've been to in years,
both because of what was sa...
March 14, 2014
Correctness Isn’t Compelling
The final report from the ICERM workshop on Reproducibility in Computational and Experimental Mathematics is now available, and its appearance has prompted m...
February 11, 2013
Twenty Percent
I realized a couple of days ago that I'd never blogged about what Software Carpentry needs to accomplish in order to change the practice of science fundament...
October 23, 2012
That Seems Simple to Me
1997
June 29, 2012
We Have Nothing To Give Them
I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgment dawns and
great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their
rewards&mdas...
January 21, 2012