Quote: The more things change ...
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" Alphonse Karr
Aryeh Hoffman
Thoughts and opinion on 40 years in computing and software development
Latest posts
Claude Code for Web Git instructions
Claude Code for the web will always make changes in a Git branch. That branch needs to be explicitly merged or instructed as an additional step. This makes it suitable for team development environments, but less so for the individual user that might want to just use it to maintain a todo list or set of documents or scripts. Claude provided the following set of instructions it follows:- Git…
Quote: Products are for the consumer
No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they're all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45628663
Quote: Keep it Simple
In computing, the concept of "keep it simple" has been weaponized against any structure that requires understanding.
Depending on an Independent Domain Model
I'm an advocate of having an entirely independent object domain model, independent of user (UI) or system interface (SI). Consumers like a UI know the domain model, but the domain model does not know any consumer. To achieve this, I typically use a publish and subscribe (pub-sub) mechanism to allow consumers to be notified when something in the object domain model changes. Thinking about the…
Quote: Marcus on AI
“To err is human, to really screw up takes an AI agent.” Gary Marcus, Marcus on AI
Stack Overflow Survey 2025
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025 Looking through the results, it seems there were no questions about software design methodology, approaches or process. One might conclude that software development is just about platforms, languages, technologies and tools.
What is good software?
From time to time I see attempts to answer this question. Most answers tend to be vague and unmeasurable. Touchy-feely statements like “good software is software that delights its users” or “you’ll know it when you see it” or one particular attribute like “maintainable”, sound nice but are unhelpful. For me the answer is that … “Good software is software that meets its statement of purpose, and…
Types of software
Not all software is of the same type or genre. This is how I differentiate between them: Line-of-business software. Characterized by the recording of business transactions for business or legal reasons. e.g. software for payroll, warehouse or leasing management, insurance claims, ERP and supply chain management. Process control and data acquisition software. Characterized largely by the logging of…
ChatGPT... Write FizzBuzz in RPG II
Once upon a time, I used RPG/II on the IBM System/32 and 34. Feeling nostalgic, I thought it might be interesting to see if ChatGPT could produce a small RPG II program. Write FizzBuzz in RPG II Response... ** Free RPG D FizzBuzz S 20A D Ctr S 5S 0 C *entry plist C dsply 'FizzBuzz' C do C add Ctr 1 Ctr C *fizzbuzz if Ctr mod 15 = 0 C dsply 'FizzBuzz' C add Ctr 1 Ctr C *fizz elseif Ctr mod 3 = 0 C…