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2025

  • 1 min read

Innovation vs. Structure - When Culture Kills Creativity

Does a playful company culture breed innovation while corporate structure stifles it?

Let's examine:

  • BlackBerry: From Fregin's creative "movie nights" to corporate rigidity... and ultimate failure
  • Twitter→X: From user-driven experimentation to Musk's centralized control
  • Apple: Jobs' chaotic creativity vs. Cook's operational excellence

Questions to ponder:

  • Can companies maintain creativity at scale?
  • Is the innovation/structure tradeoff inevitable?
  • What's your experience in different dev cultures?

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others.

BlackBerry phone on stand-by

  • 1 min read

Does Software Development Change the Way You Think?

As a developer, have you noticed that you approach life differently than "normal" people? After all those years of training and career, do you think differently than how you used to?

In other words, do you approach non-coding problems like code?

Some examples:

  • Breaking problems into parts, like modular code: e.g. you plan a trip by organising flights and hotels like modules.
  • Spotting reusable patterns: e.g. you standardise meeting agendas using templates.
  • Debugging: e.g. you troubleshoot a friend's wifi by methodically working from the edge to the ISP.

Are these shifts unique to coding? Do they make life better or just annoy those around you?

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others.

thinking

  • 1 min read

Consolidating Systems

The topic for the May 6th, 2025 chat is consolidating systems. Organizations often have data and business logic in several different databases and applications. They would like to have everything in one place, which is a noble goal but hard to achieve.

How do you consolidate these disparate systems? How do you avoid creating an extra system and avoid the XKCD standards problem (substitute application for standards).

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others.

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