Software Engineering as a University Major?

@jon_moore asked his Twitter followers what would Software Engineering as a University Major look like and he posted the interesting replies to to a storify post worth checking out. I found an interesting article, at Dr. Dobbs by Chuck Connell, on contrasts between Software Engineering and Computer Science that I largely agree with.

John Allspaw: “There is no Resilience Engineering … without real dialogue about real practice in the world.”

John Allspaw wrote a fascinating roundup of his thoughts on the 6th Resilience Engineering Symposium.

This, in particular, caught my eye:

There is no Resilience Engineering (or Cognitive Systems Engineering or Systems Safety for that matter) without real dialogue about real practice in the world. In other words, there is no such thing as purely academic here.

(via @jon_moore)

Help fund Metafilter

If you’ve been following the controversy around Reddit lately (Wired), you might be surprised. The reality is that the challenge of keeping an online community healthy as it grows is tremendous.

One community that has faced many of those challenges successfully over the years is Metafilter. Metafilter is of the strongest examples of online community anywhere on the Web, and has been since 1999. It’s a remarkable story that not enough are aware of, but that might be one of the secrets to its success.

Last month they published a new “State of Metafilter” update, documenting the improvements they’ve been implementing, as well as handling some monumental comings and goings of the team.

Keep Metafilter going with a donation. Better yet, make your donation a subscription, as I have, so that donations are scheduled periodically.

Related:

The Birthplace of Democracy

Not sure where I caught this, but since July 4th is upcoming, reading about the Ekklesia Citizens’ Assembly felt timely. Take a few moments and learn about one of the first, if not the first, democratic assembly. An influence on the writing we celebrate in a couple days.

They paid people to take time off to vote. Wouldn’t it be great to finally have that national holiday, at minimum?