https://kieranpotts.com/ Kieran Potts is a software developer and former technology journalist. His blog is a commentary on methods and tools for developing and maintaining software systems. en-US https://kieranpotts.com/mythical-man-month-50 Fri, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/mythical-man-month-50 Fred Brooks's classic book The Mythical Man-Month was published 50 years ago. It was hugely influential on the then-nascent discipline of software development. How does it stand up today? https://kieranpotts.com/the-quality-without-a-name Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/the-quality-without-a-name The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander is a classic text on real-world architecture. In computing, it was influential in the emerging field of object-oriented programming in the late 1970s and 1980s. The book still has much to teach us about how we think about software design. https://kieranpotts.com/php-is-30 Sun, 8 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/php-is-30 PHP version 1.0 was announced on 8 June 1995. It quickly became a popular server-side scripting language for websites. Here's why. https://kieranpotts.com/essential-versus-accidental-complexity Sat, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/essential-versus-accidental-complexity A mental model for thinking about the relative importance of essential and accidental complexity. https://kieranpotts.com/30-years-of-cybercafes Sun, 1 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/30-years-of-cybercafes Cyberia, thought to be the world's first commercially successful internet café, opened in London on 1 September 1994. https://kieranpotts.com/rfcs Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/rfcs Requests for Comments (RFCs) are strikingly underused in commercial software delivery. Here's why you should encourage your team to take up this mighty tool. https://kieranpotts.com/gmail-is-20 Mon, 1 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/gmail-is-20 Gmail marks the start of the era of web applications. Here's why. https://kieranpotts.com/software-attributes Thu, 4 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/software-attributes A mental model for thinking about the different attributes of a software system: it's functional and non-functional requirements, and it's quality. https://kieranpotts.com/rethinking-rest Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/rethinking-rest What's wrong with the term "REST API", and what should we use instead? https://kieranpotts.com/rebranding-javascript Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/rebranding-javascript Should we rebrand JavaScript? And if we did, what would we call it? https://kieranpotts.com/centos-vs-ubuntu Sat, 9 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/centos-vs-ubuntu CentOS and Ubuntu dominate Linux web servers. Which is best? https://kieranpotts.com/hello-world Mon, 5 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Kieran Potts https://kieranpotts.com/hello-world Welcome to my new blog, an exploration of the state of the software industry.