ACM tech talk

I’m excited to have been invited by the ACM Practitioner Board to give a tech talk at noon Eastern Time on Dec 1, 2021.

Update: recording of the talk here

The Essence of Software (Or Why Systems Often Fail by Design, and How to Fix Them)

We’ve made great strides in software, but many systems are still hard to use or behave badly. Traditionally, we’ve looked to bugs in code to explain why systems go wrong—or to flaws in the user interface that may lead to misuse. In this talk, I’ll argue that the real problem often lies elsewhere: in the very concepts of the design. I’ll present a variety of surprising snags with familiar applications, from Dropbox to Gmail, and I’ll show how concepts can diagnose them and suggest fixes. I’ll explain in concrete and actionable terms what concepts are—essentially free-standing “nanoservices” that factor the behavior of a system into independent and reusable parts—and how you can apply them in your work, whether you’re a coder, program manager, software architect, UX designer, or consultant.