Frank Wayne Burcaw 🧑💻
@aspiecoder.com
A witness to the evolution of software engineering from its earlier days to the present.
aspiecoder.com
aspiecoder.com
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Frank Wayne Burcaw 🧑💻
@aspiecoder.com
· Feb 23
What Space Invaders Can Teach Modern Software Engineers
In the late 1970s, Space Invaders emerged as a pioneering video game, engaging players with its straightforward yet compelling gameplay. Developed during a time of significant hardware constraints,…
aspiecoder.com
January 2, 2026 at 5:45 AM
December 20, 2025 at 3:30 AM
#SoftwareEngineering
"I see you removed the input validation because 'users should be free to explore the consequences of their own actions.' While I admire your commitment to the #FAFO philosophy in our error handling, Production is not the 'find out' phase. Please re-add the sanitization."
"I see you removed the input validation because 'users should be free to explore the consequences of their own actions.' While I admire your commitment to the #FAFO philosophy in our error handling, Production is not the 'find out' phase. Please re-add the sanitization."
December 12, 2025 at 11:53 AM
#SoftwareEngineering
"I see you removed the input validation because 'users should be free to explore the consequences of their own actions.' While I admire your commitment to the #FAFO philosophy in our error handling, Production is not the 'find out' phase. Please re-add the sanitization."
"I see you removed the input validation because 'users should be free to explore the consequences of their own actions.' While I admire your commitment to the #FAFO philosophy in our error handling, Production is not the 'find out' phase. Please re-add the sanitization."
Velocity is the noise. Delivered value is the music — customers came for the concert, not the soundcheck.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
December 11, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Velocity is the noise. Delivered value is the music — customers came for the concert, not the soundcheck.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
You can tally up points all sprint long, but until something hits production, it’s just busywork wearing a progress badge.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
December 9, 2025 at 5:55 AM
You can tally up points all sprint long, but until something hits production, it’s just busywork wearing a progress badge.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
Tracking completed story points without delivering value is like bragging about how many bricks you’ve stacked when the house still has no roof.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
December 5, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Tracking completed story points without delivering value is like bragging about how many bricks you’ve stacked when the house still has no roof.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
Counting story points is like measuring how fast the car’s engine revs — customers only care if the car actually moves.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
December 4, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Counting story points is like measuring how fast the car’s engine revs — customers only care if the car actually moves.
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
#Agile #SoftwareDevelopment
Responsible computer science treats reliability, safety, and fairness as design constraints on par with performance and scalability.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
November 29, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Responsible computer science treats reliability, safety, and fairness as design constraints on par with performance and scalability.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
Whether minds are computational is an open philosophical question, but computer science provides precise models that sharpen that debate.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
November 29, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Whether minds are computational is an open philosophical question, but computer science provides precise models that sharpen that debate.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
Computational artifacts embody values and assumptions; architectures, interfaces, and defaults can promote or hinder human autonomy and justice.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
November 29, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Computational artifacts embody values and assumptions; architectures, interfaces, and defaults can promote or hinder human autonomy and justice.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ethics, Mind, and Society
Semantics of programs link formal symbols to intended behavior, but this link always relies on human purposes and contexts.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
November 29, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Semantics of programs link formal symbols to intended behavior, but this link always relies on human purposes and contexts.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The same abstract structure can be encoded in many concrete ways; informativeness lies in structure-preserving mappings, not specific encodings.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
November 29, 2025 at 4:02 PM
The same abstract structure can be encoded in many concrete ways; informativeness lies in structure-preserving mappings, not specific encodings.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
Data become information only relative to a scheme of interpretation and a task; bits alone do not fix meaning.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
November 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Data become information only relative to a scheme of interpretation and a task; bits alone do not fix meaning.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Information, Meaning, and Representation
The fundamental question of the discipline is not “What exists?” but “What can be automated, and at what cost?”.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
November 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
The fundamental question of the discipline is not “What exists?” but “What can be automated, and at what cost?”.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
Complexity places a practical boundary on automation: what is computable in principle may be intractable in practice.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
November 29, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Complexity places a practical boundary on automation: what is computable in principle may be intractable in practice.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
There are well-defined limits to what can be computed or decided, but within those limits, computation can simulate any effectively describable process.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
November 29, 2025 at 4:00 PM
There are well-defined limits to what can be computed or decided, but within those limits, computation can simulate any effectively describable process.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Limits, Power, and Automation
Abstraction and representation are the core epistemic tools of computer science: what is not represented in a model cannot be reasoned about or guaranteed.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
November 29, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Abstraction and representation are the core epistemic tools of computer science: what is not represented in a model cannot be reasoned about or guaranteed.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
Testing can show the presence of bugs but not their absence; proofs can show the absence of certain bugs but only relative to chosen models and assumptions.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
November 29, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Testing can show the presence of bugs but not their absence; proofs can show the absence of certain bugs but only relative to chosen models and assumptions.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
To say that software is “correct” is to claim a justified relationship between a specification, an implementation, and an assumed environment.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
November 29, 2025 at 3:58 PM
To say that software is “correct” is to claim a justified relationship between a specification, an implementation, and an assumed environment.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Methods, Correctness, and Knowledge
A computing system is a layered artifact whose behavior depends on interactions between abstract specifications, concrete implementations, and human users.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
November 29, 2025 at 3:58 PM
A computing system is a layered artifact whose behavior depends on interactions between abstract specifications, concrete implementations, and human users.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
Programs are abstract artifacts that can be instantiated in many physical machines but are not identical to any particular implementation.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
November 29, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Programs are abstract artifacts that can be instantiated in many physical machines but are not identical to any particular implementation.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
Computation is the systematic transformation of representations according to finite, effectively executable rules.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
November 29, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Computation is the systematic transformation of representations according to finite, effectively executable rules.
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
The Intersection of #Philosophy and #ComputerScience
Ontology of Computation and Programs
Agile's reputation in software engineering largely hinges on execution. When mismanaged or reduced to ritual, Agile is often seen as harmful or superficial, eroding confidence in the discipline and undermining developer autonomy and work quality. Prove me wrong.
November 21, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Agile's reputation in software engineering largely hinges on execution. When mismanaged or reduced to ritual, Agile is often seen as harmful or superficial, eroding confidence in the discipline and undermining developer autonomy and work quality. Prove me wrong.