Why I Started This Blog

The reason I started this blog is as follows:

I intend to write a book. In fact, I am already working on it. It's going to be a book about complex systems and its relation to software engineering. Since many years I have been fascinated by the complexity of systems in biology, sociology, economics, physics and other scientific areas. And also complexity in politics and philosophy, which may not be very scientific but which is quite interesting nevertheless. (And heated debates with friends on this subject can be very amusing.)

One thing I noticed is that many aspects of complexity can also be found within the context of software projects. As a computer programmer, project manager, development manager and coffee maker I have been a participant in building software systems for almost 15 years. Lots of them have been spectacular and stunning failures. But I admit, reluctantly though, that I have delivered some successes too, most of them accidentally.

This blog will be dedicated to my attempt to write a book about complex systems and the complexity of software engineering. Here you can read about my progress, interesting material I found, conclusions I have drawn, previews of texts I have written, and every detail of my pain and suffering while going through this ordeal of writing a book. In the meantime I would love to hear your feedback about anything I am writing (or going to write), because a) feedback motivates me to keep going; b) it helps me to improve my texts; and c) it makes me look more popular, which might help me sell more copies of my book later on.

So bookmark this page now and make sure that you return here once in a while. I'll make you some coffee and we will have a nice chat about complexity, software engineering and the art of delivering horrible software.