Author Archives: Jorge Aranda

About Jorge Aranda

I'm currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SEGAL and CHISEL labs in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Victoria.

Naur’s “Programming as Theory Building”

Posted on April 19, 2011

A critique from Alistair Cockburn on how the agile movement is under attack from Taylorism led me to an essay by Dave West on the philosophical incompatibilities between lean and agile techniques, and this in turn led me to finally … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Conceptual Models, Philosophy, Software development | 17 Comments

Inflo is out

Posted on April 15, 2011

I had forgotten to post this announcement: Inflo, an online tool to collaboratively construct arguments, is out! Jono Lung, the brains behind the idea and a friend of mine, explains: Inflo is an on-line tool for collaboratively constructing arguments.  It’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Conceptual Models, Information visualization, Recommendations | Leave a comment

Nature – Climate Change

Posted on March 31, 2011

There is a new journal from Nature on topics (physical and social) surrounding climate change. In the first issue, Kurt Kleiner has a pretty good essay on open data and open climate software. Among his interviewees are Steve Easterbrook and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Recommendations | Leave a comment

Guildenstern and epistemology

Posted on March 23, 2011

A propos of nothing in particular, this quote from Stoppard’s brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. After losing nearly a hundred coin tosses in a row to Rosencrantz, who bets Heads every time, Guildenstern suspects there’s something funky going on … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Philosophy | 2 Comments

Then a Miracle Occurs?

Posted on March 2, 2011

I think one of the reasons that make many people uncomfortable with qualitative research lies in the difficulty of doing data analysis properly. You prepare a study design with carefully worded research questions, you have a bunch of interview guides, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 4 Comments

Like learning Old Norse

Posted on February 23, 2011

Since I’m doing fieldwork at a software organization these days, I have very present in my mind the difficulty of getting my bearings in a new environment. Several researchers have reported of these difficulties in the case of newcomers to … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Software development | 2 Comments

Software development according to Game Dev Story

Posted on February 16, 2011

A few days ago I found out about Game Dev Story at this list of meta games (hat tip to Lila Fontes). As the name suggests, it’s a game about having and running a game development company. Seeing as I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Organizations, Software development | 7 Comments

Publishing into the void

Posted on February 11, 2011

A few days ago, Greg Wilson tweeted: When is the last time you read something in an ACM or IEEE journal that changed how you program or the tools you use? Ever? The answer is never, in my case. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Software development | 15 Comments

“Agile” as an organizational form

Posted on January 19, 2011

Why do old organizations die? Their death runs counter to our intuition of the nature of organizations as rational entities: if an organization has established itself and secured economic stability, then, through an efficient and rational management of its resources, … Continue reading →

Posted in Organizations, Software development | 2 Comments

The thorny and the obvious

Posted on January 12, 2011

This discussion between Laurent Bossavit and Steve McConnell makes for very interesting reading: Bossavit critiques McConnell’s Making Software chapter on differences in programming productivity (original in French here), arguing that the studies it cites do not establish as a fact … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Software development | 23 Comments