How can we increase gender representation in software engineering?
Our Developer Hiring Experience team analyzed this topic in a recent user-research study. The issue resonated with women engineers and a strong response enabled the team to gain
deeper insight than is currently available from online research projects.
Seventy-one engineers who identified as women or non-binary responded to our request for feedback. Out of that pool, 24 answered a follow-up survey, and we carried out in-depth
interviews with 14 people. This was a highly skilled group, with the majority having worked in software development for over 10 years.
While some findings aligned with our expectations, we still uncovered a few surprises.
…
Excellent research courtesy of my soon-to-be new employer about the driving factors affecting women who are experienced software
engineers. Interesting (and exciting) to see that changes are already in effect, as I observed while writing about my experience of their
recruitment process.
One of the best things about working atThe Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford? Pretending to be a PhD student for a photo shoot! Watch out for me
appearing in a website near you…
My team and I do get up to some unusual stuff, it’s true. I took part in this photoshoot, too:
I’m absolutely not above selling out myself and my family for the benefit of some stock photos for the University, it seems. The sharp-eyed might even have spotted the kids in this video promoting the Ashmolean or a recent tweet by the Bodleian…
The vast majority of respondents are still using Sass and vanilla CSS? Wow! This made me pause and think. Because I feel there’s an analogy here between that unseen dark matter,
and the huge crowd of web developers who are using such “boring” technology stacks.
…
This! As a well-established developer who gets things done with a handful of solid, reliable, tried-and-tested toolsets, I’ve sometimes felt like I must be “falling behind” on the
hot-new-tech curve because I can’t keep up with whichever yet-another-Javascript-framework is supposed to be hipthis week. Earlier in my career, I didn’t have this problem. And it’s not just that we’re inventing new libraries, frameworks, and (even) languages faster than ever before –
and I’m pretty sure we are – nor is it that my thirty-something brain is less-plastic than the brain of my twenty-something younger self… it’s simpler than that: it’s that the level of
productivity that’s expected of an engineer of my level of seniority precludes me from playing with more than a couple of new approaches each year. I try, and I manage, to get a working
understanding of a new language and a framework or two most years, and I appreciate that that’s more than I’m expected to do (and more than many will), but it still feels like a drop in
the ocean: there’s always a “new hotness”.
But when I take the time to learn a “new hotness”, these days, nine times out of ten it doesn’t “stick” for me. Why? Because most of the new technologies we seem to be
inventing don’t actually add anything to the vast majority of use cases. Hipper (and often smarter) developers than me might latch on to the latest post-reational database or
the most-heavyweight CSS-in-JS-powered realtime web framework, and they dominate the online discussion, but that doesn’t make their ideas right for my projects. They’re a loud
minority with a cool technology, and I’m a little bit jealous that they have the time to learn and play with it… but I’ll just keep delivering value with the tools I’ve got,
thanks.
“Passport Photos” looks at one of the most mundane and unexciting types of photography. Heavily restricted and regulated, the official passport photo
requirements include that the subject needs to face the camera straight on, needs a clear background without shadow, no glare on glasses and most importantly; no smile.
It seems almost impossible for any kind of self-expression.
The series tries to challenge these official rules by testing all the things you could be doing while you are taking your official document photo.
…
I love this weird, wonderful, and truly surreal photography project. Especially in this modern age in which a passport photo does not necessarily involve a photo booth – you’re often
permitted now to trim down a conventional photo or even use a born-digital picture snapped from an approved app or via a web application – it’s more-feasible than ever that the cropping
of your passport photo does not reflect the reality of the scene around you.
Max’s work takes this well beyond the logical extreme, but there’s a wider message here: a reminder that the way in which any picture is cropped is absolutely an artistic
choice which can fundamentally change the message. I remember an amazing illustrative example cropping a photo of some soldiers, in turn
inspired I think by a genuine photo from the second world war. Framing and cropping an image is absolutely part of its reinterpretation.
Hurrah! Another video from the Map Men, this time about the Cassini map of France and its legacy on contemporary cartography, presented in their usual hilarious style.
The tradition of buying cheap, joke souvenirs for your loved ones while travelling dates back at least two millennia.
During an archaeological excavation at a Roman-era site in London, researchers found around 200 iron styluses used for writing on wax-filled wooden tablets. One of those styluses,
which just debuted in its first public exhibition, holds a message written in tiny lettering along its sides. The inscription’s sentiment, according to the researchers who translated it, is
essentially, “I went to Rome and all I got you was this pen.”
…
Also found in this excavation, I assume, were t-shirts printed with “I ❤ Pompeii” and moneyboxes in the shape of the Parthenon.
After three and a half years, webcomic LABS today came to an end. For
those among you who like to wait until a webcomic has finished its run before you start to read it (you know who you are), start here.
Back in February my friend Katie shared with me an already four-year-old piece of interactive fiction, Bus Station: Unbound, that I’d somehow managed to miss the first time around. In the five months since then I’ve
periodically revisited and played through it and finally gotten around to writing a review:
All of the haunting majesty of its subject, and a must-read-thrice plot
Perhaps it helps to be as intimately familiar with Preston Bus Station – in many ways, the subject of the piece – as the protagonist. This work lovingly and faithfully depicts the
space and the architecture in a way that’s hauntingly familiar to anybody who knows it personally: right down to the shape of the rubberised tiles near the phone booths, the
forbidding shadows of the underpass, and the buildings that can be surveyed from its roof.
But even without such a deep recognition of the space… which, ultimately, soon comes to diverge from reality and take on a different – darker, otherworldly – feel… there’s a magic
to the writing of this story. The reader is teased with just enough backstory to provide a compelling narrative without breaking the first-person illusion. No matter how
many times you play (and I’ve played quite a few!), you’ll be left with a hole of unanswered questions, and you’ll need to be comfortable with that to get the most out of the story,
but that in itself is an important part of the adventure. This is a story of a young person who doesn’t – who can’t – know everything that they need to bring them comfort
in the (literally and figuratively) cold and disquieting world that surrounds them, and it’s a world that’s presented with a touching and tragic beauty.
Through multiple playthroughs – or rewinds, which it took me a while to notice were an option! – you’ll find yourself teased with more and more of the story. There are a few
frankly-unfair moments where an unsatisfactory ending comes with little or no warning, and a handful of places where it feels like your choices are insignificant to the story, but
these are few and far between. Altogether this is among the better pieces of hypertext fiction I’ve enjoyed, and I’d recommend that you give it a try (even if you don’t share the
love-hate relationship with Preston Bus Station that is so common among those who spent much of their youth sitting in it).
It’s no secret that I spent a significant proportion of my youth waiting for or changing buses at (the remarkable) Preston
Bus Station, and that doubtless biases my enjoyment of this game by tingeing it with nostalgia. But I maintain that it’s a well-written piece of hypertext interactive fiction with a
rich, developed world. You can play it starting from here, and you should. It looks like the story’s
accompanying images died somewhere along the way, but you can flick through them all here and get a feel for the shadowy,
brutalist, imposing place.
I can’t get enough of this comic. Despite the fact that it’s got no written dialogue at all I must’ve read it half a dozen times and seen more in it each time. Go read the whole thing…
The <a> tag is one of the most important building blocks of the Internet. It lets you create a hyperlink: a piece of text, usually colored blue, that you can use to go to a new
page. When you click on a hyperlink, your web browser downloads the new page from the server and displays it on the screen. Most web browsers also store the pages you previously
visited so you can quickly go back to them. The best part is, the <a> tag gives you all of that behavior for free! Just tell the browser
where you want to go, and it handles the rest.
Lately, though, that hasn’t been enough for website developers. The new fad is “client-side navigation”, where instead of relying on the browser to load new pages for you, you write
a bunch of JavaScript code to do it instead. It’s actually really hard to get it right—loading the new page is simple enough, but you also have to write code to display a loading
bar, make the Back and Forward buttons work, show an error page if the connection drops, and so on.
For a while, I didn’t understand why anyone did this. Was it just silly make-work, like how every social network redesigns their website every couple years for no discernable
reason? Do <a> tags interfere with some creepy ad-tracking technique? Was there some really complicated technical reason why you
shouldn’t use them?
…
Spoiler: good old-fashioned <a> hyperlinks tend to outperform Javascript-driven client-side navigation. We already learned about one reason for this – that adding more Javascript code just to get back what the browser gives you for free increases the payload you deliver to the user – but
Carter demonstrates that progressive rendering goes a long way to explaining it, too. You see: browsers understand traditional navigation and are well-equipped with a
suite of shortcuts to help them optimise for it. They can start rendering content before it’s all downloaded, offset (hinted-at) asynchronous data for later, and of course they already
contain a pretty solid caching engine and you don’t even have to implement it yourself.
Let’s talk about the point after WW2 where the Knights Hospitaller, of medieval crusading fame, ‘accidentally’ became a major European air power.
I shitteth ye not. ?️?️
So, if I asked you to imagine the Knights Hospitaller you probably picture:
1) Angry Christians on armoured horses
2) Them being wiped out long ago like the Templars.
3) Some Dan Brown bullshit
And you would be (mostly) wrong about all three. Which is sort of how this happened.
From the beginning (1113 or so), the Hospitallers were never quite as committed to the angry, horsey thing as the Templars. They had always (ostensibly) been more about
protecting pilgrims and healthcare.
They also quite liked boats. Which were useful for both.
Over the next 150 years (or so), as the Christian grip on the Holy Lands waned, both military orders got more involved in their other hobbies – banking for the Templars, mucking
around in boats for the Hospitaller.
This proved to be a surprisingly wise decision on the Hospitaller part. By 1290ish, both Orders were homeless and weakened.
As the Templars fatally discovered, being weak AND having the King of France owe you money is a bad combo.
Being a useful NAVY, however, wins you friends.
And this is why your first vision of the Hospitallers is wrong. Because they spent the next 500 YEARS, backed by France and Spain, as one of the most powerful naval forces in
the Mediterranean, blocking efforts by the Ottomans to expand westwards by sea.
To give you an idea of the trouble they caused: in 1480 Mehmet II sent 70,000 men (against the Knights 4000) to try and boot them out of Rhodes. He failed.
Suleiman the Magnificent FINALLY managed it in 1522 with 200,000 men. But even he had to agree to let the survivors leave.
The surviving Hospitallers hopped on their ships (again) and sailed away. After some vigorous lobbying, in 1530 the King of Spain agreed to rent them Malta, in return for a
single maltese falcon every year.
Because that’s how good rents were pre-housing crisis in Europe.
The Knights turned Malta into ANOTHER fortified island. For the next 200 years ‘the Pope’s own navy’ waged a war of piracy, slavery and (occasionally) pitched sea battles
against the Ottomans.
From Malta, they blocked Ottoman strategic access to the western med. A point that was not lost on the Ottomans, who sent 40,000 men to try and take the island in 1565 – the
‘Great Siege of Malta’.
The Knights, fighting almost to the last man, held out and won.
Now the important thing here is the CONTINUED EXISTENCE AS A SOVEREIGN STATE of the Knights Hospitaller. They held Malta right up until 1798, when Napoleon finally managed to
boot them out on his way to Egypt.
(Partly because the French contingent of the Knights swapped sides)
The British turned up about three months later and the French were sent packing, but, well, It was the British so:
THE KNIGHTS: Can we have our strategically important island back please?
THE BRITISH: What island?
THE KNIGHT: That island
THE BRITISH: Nope. Can’t see an island
After the Napoleonic wars no one really wanted to bring up the whole Malta thing with the British (the Putin’s Russia of the era) so the European powers fudged it. They said the
Knights were still a sovereign state and they tried to sort them out with a new country. But never did
The Russian Emperor let them hang out in St Petersburg for a while, but that was awkward (Catholicism vs Orthodox). Then the Swedes were persuaded to offer them Gotland.
But every offer was conditional on the Knights dropping their claim to Malta. Which they REFUSED to do.
~ wobbly lines ~
It’s the 1900s. The Knights are still a stateless state complaining about Malta. What that means legally is a can of worms NO ONE wants to open in international law but
they’ve also rediscovered their original mission (healthcare) so everyone kinda ignores them
The Knights become a pseudo-Red Cross organisation. In WW1 they run ambulance trains and have medical battalions, loosely affiliated with the Italian army (still do). In WW2
they do it too.
Italy surrenders. The allies move on then…
Oh dear.
Who wrote this peace deal again?
It turns out the Treaty of Peace with Italy should go FIRMLY into the category of ‘things that seemed a good idea at the time’.
This is because it presupposes that relations between the west and the Soviets will be good, and so limits Italy’s MILITARY.
This is a problem.
Because as the early Cold War ramps up, the US needs to build up its Euro allies ASAP.
But the treaty limits the Italians to 400 airframes, and bans them from owning ANYTHING that might be a bomber.
This can be changed, but not QUICKLY.
Then someone remembers about the Knights
The Knights might not have any GEOGRAPHY, but because everyone avoided dealing with the tricky international law problem it can be argued – with a straight face – that they are
still TECHNICALLY A EUROPEAN SOVEREIGN STATE.
And they’re not bound by the WW2 peace treaty.
Italy (with US/UK/French blessing) approaches the Knights and explains the problem.
The Knights reasonably point out that they’re not in the business of fighting wars anymore, but anything that could be called a SUPPORT aircraft is another matter.
So, in the aftermath of WW2, this is the ballet that happens:
The Italians transfer all of their support and training aircraft to the Knights.
This then frees up the ‘cap room’ to allow the US to boost Italy’s warfighting ability WITHOUT breaking the WW2 peace treaty.
This is why, in the late forties/fifties, a good chunk of the ‘Italian’ air force is flying with a Maltese Cross Roundel.
Because they were not TECHNICALLY Italian. They were the air force of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
And that’s how the Knights Hospitaller ended up becoming a major air power.
Eventually the treaties were reworked, and everything was quietly transferred back. I suspect it’s a reason why the sovereign status of the Knights remains unchallenged still
today though.
And that’s why today, even thought they are now fully committed to the Red-Cross-esque stuff, they can still issue passports, are a permanent observer at the UN, have a
currency…
One of the benefits of being in a camera club full of largely retired people who were all into photography long before digital was ever a thing, is that lots of them have old film,
paper and gear lying around they’re happy to give away.
Last year I was offered a photographic enlarger for making prints, but I initially turned it down because I didn’t think I’d have the space to set up a darkroom and use it. Well,
turns out with a little imagination our windowless bathroom actually converts into a pretty tidy darkroom with fairly minimal setup and teardown – thankfully we also have an
ensuite so my partner can cope with this arrangement with only minimal grumbling
…
My friend Rory tells the story of how he set up a darkroom in his (spare) windowless bathroom and shares his experience of becoming an
increasingly analogue photographer in an increasingly almost-completely digital world.
The other day, I saw someone on Twitter say (I’m not linking to the original tweet because I don’t want to pile-on the author):
I don’t bother with frameworks, I just use vanilla JS.
Roughly translated:
I’m smarter than the thousands of people who tried to solve the problems I’m about to solve. I’m an expert on security, a11y, browser support, and perf. I don’t care about ROI, I
just want to code.
Here’s the thing: frameworks don’t really help you with this stuff.
Very much this. People who use Javascript frameworks because they think they protect them from common web development pitfalls are simply trading away a set of known, solvable problems
and taking on a different set of unknown, unsolvable ones.
I’m not anti-framework, but I am pro-informed-developer. If security, accessibility, performance, and browser support are things you care about – and they absolutely should be – then
you need to know the impact that the tools you choose have upon those things. It’s easy to learn the impact that vanilla JS has on them, but
it’s harder to understand exactly what impact a framework might have or how that impact might be affected by interactions between it and all of the other frameworks and
libraries you mix-in. And many developers don’t bother to learn.
Use frameworks if they’re the right tool for your job. But you should work towards understanding your tools. Incidentally: in doing so, you’ll probably come to discover that
frameworks are the right tool for fewer jobs than you thought.
