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Entwicklungspraxis March 14, 2024

Two More Billion Dollar Mistakes

Hi,

You might have heard that null was referred to by its creator, Tony Hoare, as the “billion-dollar mistake.” In 2009, he publicly apologized at QCon for taking the easy path in 1965 by inventing null:

“I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object-oriented language (ALGOL W ). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.”


Entwicklungspraxis February 29, 2024

Survivorship Bias in Tech

Hi,

Do you know what Survivorship Bias is?

[…] According to Survivorship Bias, the probabilities of success are systematically overestimated because successful individuals or states are more visible than unsuccessful ones. ~ Wikipedia

This cognitive bias is interesting because it affects us in development as well. For 15 years, I have been working mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are companies with up to 250 employees. Clearly, these are not large corporations.


Entwicklungspraxis February 21, 2024

Three Topics

Hi,

This year, I’m a bit behind with the newsletters. For one, I’m deeply involved in client projects – and the client always comes first. Additionally, since the beginning of the year, I’ve been battling pneumonia. It only started to improve this week. The symptoms were mild - after all, I continued to work - but I noticed a lack of energy for tasks beyond my duties.

To get back into the swing of things: Today, I have three short topics for you.


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