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The Shape of the System

shapeofthesystem.com · 9,641 words · saved by 1 readers

Structure over vigilance: twenty-five tenets for engineering around the limits of human and machine cognition, building correctness into the shape of the system.

New here? Start at the front door. Five ways in, depending on why you came. Software gets read far more than it gets written. It gets changed more than it gets read, and then it runs in a world that fails partially, at the worst possible moment, usually while you're asleep. So build correctness into the shape of the system, not into the vigilance of the people keeping it going. Any rule you can only enforce by remembering it is a rule that will eventually get forgotten, and any defence you have to run by hand gets skipped the first time there's a deadline. The objective has two terms and…

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