Author Archives: Bill Higgins

humans are terrible and wonderful Big Data systems

Recently I’ve been deep diving on the topics of big data and analytics. For the benefit of non-technical family members who read this blog, let me give two quick layman’s definitions: Big data simply refers to massive data sets and … Continue reading

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this is what a technical paradigm shift looks like in realtime

From Andy Ihnatko’s iPad 2 review: After a week with the iPad 2, I’ve come to realize that Apple’s true revolutionary change has been conceptual. The first iPad wasn’t just a new product … it was a whole new category … Continue reading

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when the tailgate drops, the bullshit stops

A friend pointed out the other day that I hadn’t posted anything on my journal, but I don’t really have anything to say at the moment because I’ve been heavily in output mode (writing code and such) vs. my previous … Continue reading

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horseless carriages and smartphones

We have a tendency to not be able to comprehend emerging transformative technologies. Rather we tend to only be able to reason about them in a very limited way in terms of current well-understood technologies. Kevin Kelly talks about this … Continue reading

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my biases with regards to software frameworks

I believe that the topic of “how to use software frameworks” is one of the most complex and problematic in the world of software development. They are seductive because they offer the promise of making rapid progress, but they are … Continue reading

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diffusion of innovations and logical fallacies

I woke up in the middle of the night as I sometimes do and, not being sleepy, I did some reading on the web. Via a friend on Twitter, I found an article by Philippe Kruchten called “The Elephants in the … Continue reading

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hall of mirrors

This afternoon, Pratik Gupta (currently responsible for Virtualization Management at IBM) came into my office so I could give him a copy of a VM with some recent interesting IBM software. As I was demoing the VM, I momentarily got confused … Continue reading

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being right is not enough

In early 2010, I started a skunkworks project in IBM that ultimately failed. This left me quite disillusioned because I was so certain that the goal of the project was critical to the success of the business yet the project … Continue reading

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Dieter Rams’ ten principles for good design

I learned about Dieter Rams via my frequent reading about Apple design methodology. I love his “ten principles for good design”. I first started studying Dieter when I learned about a book called “Less and More: The Design Ethos of … Continue reading

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my commonplace book

Recently I’ve been reading and enjoying very much Steven Johnson’s book “Where Good Ideas Come From“. A particular passage from this book inspired me to start a new blog – a journal – to record everyday thoughts. Here is the … Continue reading

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