Tech-inzichten door Niek de Greef. Reflecties op technologie, software development en de impact van digitale innovaties op cultuur en maatschappij.
OBS Studio is een geweldig tool om video opnames te maken van je computer. Ik gebruik het om trainingsmateriaal te maken, veelal voor software tooling.
Met OBS Studio kan je je scherm opnemen, tegelijk met het gelijk dat je kan inspreken zijdens het maken van een instructie. Ook kan je de schermopname live streamen. Het tool is van professionele kwaliteit. Het is zeer stabiel en heeft vele mogelijkheden, zoals verschillende broninstellingen en uitvoermogelijkheden.
The Long(er) Tail from Chris Anderson inspired my to build a ExecPgm.org website which aims gather to knowledge, tools, shareables on mainframe technology, anything that is useful knowledge for the mainframe crowd out there. Without any minimal or maximum sophistication level. Not sure where it will go but if nothing else it is a nice (WordPress) learning experience for me.
In The Dawn of Software Engineering by Edgar Daylight (researching Dijkstra) I stumbled upon the name of an early computer scientist called John Atanasoff. Unfamiliar with this name I decided to look him up. Atanasoff, I found out, was the inventor of the digital computer! And I was not aware of his name (or must have worryingly forgotten). 
The Internet tells me Atanasoff invented and constructed the first digital computer already in the 1930s! It was called the ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer).
According to The Internet he spent much of the second half of his career in a courtcase with Sperry-Rand, who claimed that ’their’ Eckert and Mauchly divised the digital computer and Honeywell had used their patent. In 1972 federal court in the US came to a conclusion:
“The subject matter of one or more claims of the ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff, and the invention claimed in the ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff. “
“Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff.”
Auch for my ignorance.
Some links with more about him:
History repeats. E.W. Dijkstra argued that programming elegance and ease should be more important than efficiency. Many of his contemporaries opposed this view. Dijkstra held programming should be made easier, through definition of a machine-independent programming language. Algol was machine independent. FORTRAN was full of machine dependencies.
To Dijkstra, inefficiencies are solved soon, by next generation computers that are faster.
Today, efficiency is an afterthought in programming. But for different reasons. Today, (perceived) speed of delivery is key. Which leads to a waste of computer resources in very many cases. I write perceived between brackets. Because it is seldom better. Sloppy, hasty work leads to massive rework. But that is accepted.
On the back of The Phoenix Project it says “a must read for business and IT executives”. It is.
You need data backing up issues. Not hearsay.
Your job as a VP of IT Operations:
– Ensure a fast, predictable, uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business.
– Minimize the implact and disruption of unplanned work in order to provide stable, predictable and secure IT.
The Three Ways:
There is a Brent in every organization. The wizard that pieces everything together and seems to be a required resource on every project. His knowledge must be documented, his process automated.
If he is not a Sharer but a Hoarder, keeping all information to himself, he must be fired eventually.
Four categories of work:
The theory of Constraints:
Work in progress (WIP) is the BIG Killer for productivity. Get things done.
Technical debt: when not paid down, interest grows over time. You keep paying (more and more) interest in the form of unplanned work.
A work center: man, machine, method, measures.
Start with thinking totally extreme: think improving to the extreme (deploy from once every 3 month to 10 times per day).
IT is at the core of every modern organization. Ignoring that will bring the organization in Big Trouble.
Hoarders vs Sharers. People holding information about tasks they only know how to do. Get rid of that/them.
Nice summary in the back.
Also about productivity in IT: Grip.