In the beginning
Who am I
I am an ageing software developer for hire who still gets a buzz out of creating usable technology that can change a business. I enjoy understanding a business, looking at what they want to achieve and developing something that meets and, hopefully, exceeds what they are after.
I started off trying to avoid working in my degree subject of Computer Science, by heading for Africa as a volunteer teacher. Returning to a recession hit UK I eventually stumbled upon work maintaining an assembler based message switch application, gradually working my way up through Windows 1.0 applications and eventually migrating to building finance systems to manage complex derivatives.
As the market for complex derivatives has cooled somewhat since the Great Recession, I am now a C++ developer for hire with a background in SQL Server databases, Excel and VBA plus a bit of python.
But that’s not what I want to talk about in this blog. The real question I want to address is …
Why are we so bad at software?
And yes I know that ChatGPT has wowed everyone to the point of thinking we are all doomed to employment picking fruit for a living. I am not quite so certain about this, and I will have retired before farm work becomes compulsory.
I will look at why am slightly sceptical about the AI hype, what is wrong (in my opinion) with the software industry and maybe identify some ways to make it better.
For those who are curious to know what a complex derivative is and why we ever needed them, I may drop some hints from the side-lines.
More specifically I will unashamedly tout my PersisTables toolkit as the answer to all those traders who insist on using Excel as their sole technology platform. For more on this keep reading.
And here is a picture from my retirement veranda, if I ever get the chance to retire.
