Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2006 May 20 (entry 1)

# 20 May 2006, 01:32PM: MC Masala, and Something Laughworthy: I'll start with a taxonomy that made me laugh (caution: it's raunchy).

Some columns I've written lately (tardy because of ANG technical problems):

From April: Scheme, scheming, and geek authenticity and getting married -- a shock to one who thought she knew me (viz., me).

From May: Bug tracking for the soul.

How secure are you? Do you encourage people to find errors in your work so you can correct them? Do you welcome even brusque or picayune reports of your mistakes?

If you're a programmer, you don't have a choice. Or, rather, your choice is between welcoming bug reports or distributing very buggy software.

Every day I marvel at my colleagues' ability to separate themselves from their work when users point out its shortcomings.

Fred Brooks called it "egoless programming." I'd like to see "egoless writing" or "egoless governing" as often as I see programmers congratulate users or testers for finding their bugs.

I've been soliciting advice from married people.

Upon hearing a guy sing the praises of honesty, a woman chimed in to say, "But if you cheat on your spouse, don't tell him just to make yourself feel better."

The rest of the folks at the table suggested that a person in that situation had already disregarded another, more crucial bit of advice.

And something else that would be comically absurd if it weren't heartbreaking: An Iranian girl defends herself from an attempted rape, and is sentenced to death. Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi will almost certainly die before she sees another winter. If not her, another equally innocent Iranian girl.

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