2025-06-16 Monday - The Tools of an Artisan

These are some fine new additions to my woodworking toolbox:
[Nicholson WoodChuck 4-in-1 Combination Chisel/Wood Rasp (3-Piece)]

[image credit: The Home Depot]

 

Today's meditation:
You can learn much by studying the tools used by an artisan.

I have a love affair with great tools.
I love to build & repair things.
But especially, repairing broken things.

It is a gift I inherited from my father.

This has been a boon in the professional consulting work that I sometimes do: Repairing an architecture, a process, a design, a team, or an organization.

It wasn't until I became the owner of my first sailboat (at the time, a 31 year old boat, that had seen better days...a 1971, 32 ft. Islander sloop, made by Wayfarer Yachts) - that I really began organizing my tools into separate toolboxes, by use/purpose. Maintaining an aging ocean voyaging vessel is a special kind of love affair...and many things often break.

Today, I have seven primary toolboxes. There are some tools that I intend to use for decades, and am careful about their selection and quality. Other tools, are sometimes just for a one-time use.

To say I am particular about my tools, would be an understatement.

I feel the same way about the tools I use in my professional work...but regrettably, I am often forced to use the tools that are already selected by a team, or an organization.

It has been my observation that many folks try to effect a repair job - without the proper tool. Often, much frustration ensues. Sometimes, injuries - or damages - will occur, as a result.

There are many corollaries, in the work that we do in IT.

2025-06-15 Sunday - Advice to Those Starting Their Professional IT Career

[image credit: Seaq68 on Pixabay.com]

 

There are many various bits of advice I might give someone that is just starting their professional IT career...but I'm going to offer this advice, first:

• Incorporate a fitness regimen into your DAILY life - and maintain it, no matter what.
• The nature of IT work is often far too sedentary. The consequences will slowly accrete.  

• Regular exercise will also provide time away from the keyboard - where you will often find those "Aha!" moments.  

• Additionally, regular exercise will lift your mood, help you manage stress better, and the quality of your sleep will be greatly improved. 

2025-06-09 Monday - Operations Research: Optimization Algorithms, Background Reading

A LinkedIn post today, by Oleksandr Kaleniuk (author of Manning's Geometry for Programmers book), mentioned a book ("Optimization Algorithms: AI techniques for design, planning, and control problems",  2024 - also see the companion GitHub repository for the book)

... that led me on a brief diversion, researching other books, articles, and journals on optimization algorithms for Operations Research

This blog post is a placeholder, as I continue to collect interesting citations. 

References: 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solver
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_function
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_analysis
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karush%E2%80%93Kuhn%E2%80%93Tucker_conditions
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_programming
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_programming
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_(mathematics)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_of_a_real_variable
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipschitz_continuity
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rademacher%27s_theorem
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinitz%27s_theorem

 

Journals:  

• Annals of Operations Research 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_Operations_Research  

• Management Science (MSNC) 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_Science_(journal)  

• Mathematics of Operations Research (MOOR)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_Operations_Research  

• Operations Research (OPRE)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Research_(journal) 

 

Possibly Interesting Books:  

(in a somewhat arbitrary suggested order of possible interest/value) 

• Algorithms for Optimization (Mit Press, 2019) 
• 4.7 stars, 119 reviews

• Numerical Optimization (Springer Series in Operations Research and Financial Engineering, 2nd Edition, 2006) 
• 4.4 stars, 129 reviews 

• High-Dimensional Probability: An Introduction with Applications in Data Science (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics, Series Number 47) 1st Edition (2018) 
• 4.7 stars, 74 reviews 
• "High-dimensional probability offers insight into the behavior of random vectors, random matrices, random subspaces, and objects used to quantify uncertainty in high dimensions. Drawing on ideas from probability, analysis, and geometry, it lends itself to applications in mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, signal processing, optimization, and more. It is the first to integrate theory, key tools, and modern applications of high-dimensional probability. Concentration inequalities form the core, and it covers both classical results such as Hoeffding's and Chernoff's inequalities and modern developments such as the matrix Bernstein's inequality. It then introduces the powerful methods based on stochastic processes, including such tools as Slepian's, Sudakov's, and Dudley's inequalities, as well as generic chaining and bounds based on VC dimension. A broad range of illustrations is embedded throughout, including classical and modern results for covariance estimation, clustering, networks, semidefinite programming, coding, dimension reduction, matrix completion, machine learning, compressed sensing, and sparse regression."  

• High-Dimensional Statistics: A Non-Asymptotic Viewpoint (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics, Series Number 48, 2019) 
• 4.8 stars, 65 reviews 

 

Other Books:  

(in a somewhat arbitrary suggested order of possible interest/value)  

• Convex Optimization 1st Edition (2004) 
• 4.6 stars, 198 reviews  

• Convex Optimization Algorithms 1st Edition (2015) 
• 4.9 stars, 16 reviews  

• Convex Optimization Theory First Edition (2009)
• 4.6 stars, 22 reviews  

• Convex Analysis and Optimization (2003) 
• 4.8 stars, 9 reviews  

• Introductory Lectures on Convex Optimization: A Basic Course (Applied Optimization, 87, 2003)  
• 4.3 stars, 6 reviews 

•  Lectures on Convex Optimization (Springer Optimization and Its Applications, 137, 2018) Second Edition
• 4.7 stars, 21 reviews   

• Optimization for Data Analysis (2022) 
• 3.7 stars, 22 reviews   

• Introduction to Linear Optimization (Athena Scientific Series in Optimization and Neural Computation, 6, 1997) 
• 4.5 stars, 92 reviews   

•  Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control First Edition (2019)
• 4.5 stars, 37 reviews  

•  Statistical Inference via Convex Optimization (Princeton Series in Applied Mathematics) (202)
• 4.6 stars, 3 reviews  

 

Commercial Optmization Solutions:  

• https://www.gurobi.com/ 
• https://timefold.ai/ 

 

Open Source Optimization Solutions: 

• Google OR-Tools 
• https://github.com/google/or-tools 
• "OR-Tools is an open source software suite for optimization, tuned for tackling the world's toughest problems in vehicle routing, flows, integer and linear programming, and constraint programming."
• "After modeling your problem in the programming language of your choice, you can use any of a half dozen solvers to solve it: commercial solvers such as Gurobi or CPLEX, or open-source solvers such as SCIP, GLPK, or Google's GLOP and award-winning CP-SAT."   
• License:  Apache 2.0

• MiniZinc
• https://www.minizinc.org/ 
• https://github.com/MiniZinc 
• " a high-level constraint modelling language that allows you to easily express and solve discrete optimisation problems."
• License: Mozilla Public License version 2.0  

• pyomo 
• https://www.pyomo.org/ 
• https://github.com/Pyomo/pyomo 
• "Pyomo is a Python-based, open-source optimization modeling language with a diverse set of optimization capabilities." 
• License: License.md 

•  R Project CRAN Task View: Optimization and Mathematical Programming
• https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Optimization.html  
• https://github.com/cran-task-views/Optimization/  
• "This CRAN Task View contains a list of packages that offer facilities for solving optimization problems."

• Timefold Solver 
• https://solver.timefold.ai/ 
• https://github.com/TimefoldAI/timefold-solver 
• "The open source Solver AI for Java, Python and Kotlin to optimize scheduling and routing. Solve the vehicle routing problem, employee rostering, task assignment, maintenance scheduling and other planning problems."
• License: Apache 2.0 

 

Optimization Competitions:  

• https://www.minizinc.org/challenge/ 
• Noteworthy: See the different tools, by year, for past competitions, that won Gold, Silver, Bronze. 

2025-06-05 Thursday - Notes on Testing Schools of Thought

Status: work-in-progress 

Unless a business is in a highly regulated industry (and required, by regulation or standards - to establish separate testing teams), I do not believe it is generally beneficial to have a separate Testing/QA team - it simply creates yet another hand-off, and a gating function, that delays delivery of business value. 

If agile and DevOps practices are followed, the delivery team developers should be responsible for their own testing - and with CI/CD practices - testing should be automated to the maximum extent possible. 

This is a placeholder blog post to organize links to articles, books, and talks... 

Dave Thomas:

• YouTube: 
• Dave Thomas on Testing Past, Present, and Future
•  Code Quality: Lessons from The Pragmatic Programmer 

 

Dave Farley:  

• YouTube:
• Acceptance Testing Is the FUTURE of Programming  

• Articles:  
• The Impact of Continuous Delivery  

• Books: 
• Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series  (2010)
• Authors: Jez Humble, Dave Farley

Emily Bache: 

• YouTube:
• I REGRET Not Telling Dave Farley THIS about Approval Testing 
• Definition: Characterization Tests 

2025-05-15 Thursday - Book Review - Building Quantum Software in Python: A developer's guide

 

 

[image source: Amazon.com]

 
Building Quantum Software in Python: A developer's guide
by Constantin Gonciulea, and Charlee Stefanski

Review: 

An excellent book that will walk you through the principles, concepts, theory, and practical techniques of building quantum computing software, with Python. 

The quality of the writing is "crisp" - a word of praise I reserve for the best authors.

 

Full Disclosure:

I was invited to participate in early manuscript reviews, by Constantin.

 

2025-04-13 Sunday - Suggested Event Sourcing Background Reading

This a placeholder for organizing interesting Event Sourcing related background reading content. 

Status: Work-in-progress...

 

A LinkedIn post today, by Sam Hatoum (Founder, Auto - Model Automation Platform for Event Modelers), spurred me to assemble some suggested background reading notes for folks that may be interested in Event Sourcing:

• https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-driven_architecture
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_store
  

• Microsoft Azure
  
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/patterns/event-sourcing
• AWS
  
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/cloud-design-patterns/event-sourcing.html
  
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/modernization-data-persistence/service-per-team.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/modernization-data-persistence/cqrs-pattern.html 
  
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• https://cloud.google.com/eventarc/docs/event-driven-architectures
• https://cloud.google.com/solutions/event-driven-architecture-pubsub 
• https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Community-Blogs/Building-event-driven-architectures-on-Google-Cloud/ba-p/603961
• Oracle OCI
• https://www.ateam-oracle.com/post/event-driven-integrations-primer 
• https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Events/Concepts/eventsoverview.htm
  
• https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Events/Reference/eventsproducers.htm 
• https://docs.public.oneportal.content.oci.oraclecloud.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Events/home.htm
• Confluent
  
• https://www.confluent.io/learn/event-sourcing/

   

• https://www.javaadvent.com/2024/12/introduction-to-event-sourcing.html
  
• https://dev.to/barryosull/event-sourcing-what-it-is-and-why-its-awesome
• https://medium.com/@alxkm/event-sourcing-explained-benefits-challenges-and-use-cases-d889dc96fc18
  
• https://newsletter.scalablethread.com/p/what-is-event-sourcing
• https://microservices.io/patterns/data/event-sourcing.html
• https://kgoralski.gitbook.io/wiki/event-sourcing-and-cqrs
• https://www.dremio.com/wiki/event-sourcing/
• https://www.kurrent.io/event-sourcing
• https://www.eventstorming.com/ 
  

 

Interesting Discussion Forums: 

• https://groups.google.com/g/dddcqrs
• Reddit thread: What is Event Sourcing?

 

Interesting Github Resources:

• https://github.com/leandrocp/awesome-cqrs-event-sourcing
• https://github.com/xolvio/typescript-event-sourcing
• Suggested by Sam Hatoum 
  
• https://github.com/snamiki1212/awesome-go-cqrs-event-sourcing
• https://github.com/meysamhadeli/awesome-dotnet-tips/blob/main/docs/event-sourcing.md
• https://github.com/mindreframer/awesome_cqrs
• https://github.com/lutzh/awesome-event-driven-architecture
• https://github.com/heynickc/awesome-ddd 

 

Interesting Event Sourcing Frameworks:

[TO-DO: Identify comparable frameworks written in Java, Python, Rust, Go, ...]

Python:

• eventsourcing:
  
• https://eventsourcing.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ 
• https://github.com/pyeventsourcing/eventsourcing

 

JavaScript: 

• Emmett: 
  
• "Emmett is an opinionated yet flexible framework that implements Event Sourcing for Node.js applications. It focuses on composition rather than magic, providing lightweight abstractions and clear patterns that make Event Sourcing accessible and maintainable."

• https://event-driven-io.github.io/emmett/
• https://event-driven-io.github.io/emmett/overview.html
• https://event-driven.io/en/introducing_emmett/
• https://github.com/event-driven-io/emmett

 

Interesting Talks on YouTube

• Confluent: Event Sourcing 101: Event Sourcing vs. Event Streaming  
• Greg Young:
  
• GregYoung 8 CQRS Class
• Suggested by Sam Hatoum
• 2024 Code on the Beach, Greg Young: CQRS and Event Sourcing 
• 2016 DDD Europe, Greg Young: A Decade of DDD, CQRS, Event Sourcing 
  
• 2014 GOTO, Greg Young: Event Sourcing
• 2011 Professional.NET Vienna, Greg Young: CQRS/DDD by Greg Young 
  
• 2024 NDC Oslo, Anita Kvamme: Event Sourcing – the what, why & how 
• 2024 Build Stuff, Michael Staib: CQRS, DDD and GraphQL, a perfect fit
• 2023 NDC Oslo, Udi Dahan: CQRS pitfalls and patterns
• 2021-202x CodeOpinion, Derek Comartin (14 videos)
  
• Event Sourcing Example & Explained in plain English 
• ...
• ...
  
• Don't Let the Internet Dupe You, that's NOT Event Sourcing 
• ...
• ...
  
• 2019 VoxxedDay Microsoervices Paris, David Schmitz: Event Sourcing - You are doing it wrong
  
• 2017 NDC London, Mathew McLoughlin: An Introduction to CQRS and Event Sourcing Patterns
  
• 2015 SpringOne2GX, Michael Ploed: Building microservices with event sourcing and CQRS 
  

2025-03-26 Wednesday - Due Diligence - an important skill

[image credit: markfizzwig on pixabay.com]

 

[my LinkedIn companion post]

Today's meditation:
Due Diligence - an important skill.

My approach uses a multi-dimensional analysis - and sometimes, what I find is very surprising.

While you can learn techniques of due diligence...that alone, will often mislead you.

Do not ___just___ trust what you see, what you hear, what you read.

Like a good reporter, you need to find two or more sources - for confirmation.

Seek different perspectives.

Think outside of the box.

Dig beyond just the surface.

Listen to your intuition...when something is "off", you should feel it.

Don't be misled by just identifying the facts and data points.
The relationships between the data points can also be vital.

At other times, it may be a data point that is missing (or intentionally hidden) that leads to an important finding.

Pay attention when the story is different, over time - and location where told.

Sometimes, it will be aspects of the time elements that lead to a significant clue.

Being able to spot patterns...invaluable.

To do it well, you will also need something like the instincts of a bloodhound.

2025-03-23 Sunday - Design and Architecture Reviews

 

[image credit: Guren-The-Thirdeye on pixabay.com]

 [my companion LinkedIn post]

Today's meditation:

Today I read a LinkedIn post by a Meta IT leader...with a long list of technology preferences/choices by which they would identify when NOT to hire someone...they also included design and architecture reviews.

To me, that is a very harmful belief. It smells of hubris. It is toxic.
I would hope that is not a commonly shared belief within Meta...but if it is, it would explain much.

No one person knows everything.
Humility is a valuable character trait in every leader.

Assuming you probably missed something should be a First Principle for any practice of design or architecture review.

Even if the design and architecture are correct - you may still yet learn something by engaging in a review with others.

But, here's the point that most people miss: Design and architecture reviews are also teaching and communication tools - for the benefit of others.

In 40 years, based on my many and varied field observations, across many organizations, for countless projects and initiatives - for almost any non-trivial problem, I think there have always been some useful observations, questions, suggestions, concerns raised - during a design or architecture review. In some, catastrophically bad decisions were corrected.

You do not waste time by engaging in design or architecture reviews - you are performing an important and necessary governance function - to mitigate potential risks, as well as supporting the communication (and awareness) aspects of change management.

 

2025-03-16 Sunday - On the value of tending your garden

 

[image credit: geralt on pixabay.com]

Today's meditation:
On the value of tending your garden. [LinkedIn companion post]

I am well-known for my habits of gathering, organizing, and freely sharing knowledge.
In this sense, I take care to collect and cultivate seeds.

I have a fairly large knowledge management repository - which I have spent decades refining and continuing to capture notes, ideas, citations, bits of knowledge, research papers, profiles of interesting people (investors, leaders, scientists, researchers, innovators, creators, makers), news on various businesses and industries that I find interesting, emerging trends, experiments, techniques, problems/solutions, vendor product developments, etc.

My collection of research notes on interesting articles, papers, blog posts, news items, etc. - for each year - are personally curated - and massive.

Within the last hour, a request came in from a former colleague, asking for some suggested background reading on a very particular topic. I just sent him 16 specific recommendations.

That was possible because of my consistent discipline in developing a personal knowledge management practice.

On Friday, I had a mentoring call with a young undergraduate student who is planning to do some graduate study in Europe, with a keen eye to universities in Germany. I provided him a fairly lengthy list of PhD researchers and professors there (in my network, and in fields related to his studies), that I recommended he connect with on LinkedIn.

That was possible because I have invested time in building a professional network that spans the globe.

A good gardener does not sit idle. You must tend to your garden and nurture the soil - continuing to plant seeds - so that it may bring forth fruit and nourish others.

May your harvest be bountiful.

2025-01-29 Wed - When You Need a "10th Man"

 

Today's meditation:
When you are planning a major high-risk business/technology initiative - you need a "10th man" (or, woman)

That also goes for every board, steering committee, leadership team...

To obtain the maximum benefit, you should engage an outsider.

Someone that is free from the political pressure of existing/operating within the framework of your organization.

Someone that is unencumbered by the potentially debilitating concerns of whether their honest feedback will jeopardize their status as an employee, or put them at risk of obtaining an unfavorable annual review, or that speaking truth to power might put their bonus in jeopardy.

When your very survival is at stake, when you require discretion, when depth and breadth of experience is critical - and integrity is essential...call me.

For anything less, call someone else.

 

[LinkedIn companioin post]

 

2025-01-08 Wed - Some Recent Aggregated Key Observations - Coaching and Mentoring

[image credit: Tama66 on pixabay.com]

 

 

Today's meditation:
Recently, I had an opportunity to offer several folks some much needed career coaching/mentoring.

Sometimes, those conversations require some pointed advice, and some harsh truths. Especially when the person is laboring under delusions that are actively harming their efforts.

As a generic summary of some aggregated key observations:

No, you are not being discriminated against.

Here's why companies and recruiters are not responding to your application submission:

Your resume is like a tragic construction project that was abandoned mid-build.

Your resume is a recitation of places you have worked - but doesn't reflect WHAT you CONTRIBUTED, the IMPACT you had, or the RESULTS you produced....and, more importantly, you have not QUANTIFIED those details.

As a metaphor, your competition (for any job in your field of specialization) have invested time & effort to build a career, experience, and credentials - that would best be characterized as "showing up in a Ferrari" - while you have been satisfied with building a career that might best be characterized as "showing up in a Yugo".

You have made ZERO effort to distinguish yourself.

You have made ZERO effort to demonstrate thought leadership.

You have demonstrated ZERO effort to show that you are curious - and have been continually learning.

You have made ZERO effort to build a professional network.

You have not even tried to leverage the very meager professional network you have haphazardly built by happenstance.

You have NOT done THE WORK - to prepare yourself to compete in this job market.

You are NOT owed a job.
You must EARN the right to a job.

You have simply SHOWED UP - and exigent supply-demand forces have allowed you to have a job, in the past.

You have apparently depended on LUCK and HOPE - and that is no longer a feasible job search strategy.

You have been COASTING.

You need to GET OUT OF NEUTRAL.

You need to LIGHT A FIRE in your belly.