
Kindness, Wickedness and Safety - r4um
http://brooker.co.za/blog/2019/08/12/kind-wicked
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0wis
I can’t resist to make a parallel with good or poor implementation of 6 sigma,
5S or any other lean methodology. If the environment is kind, they will help
the worker and indeed increase the productivity. If not, they will squeeze
him, and in the end become counterproductive.

It seems that avoiding wicked environments is extending far beyond security.
Wickedness or fairness may have compounding effects on many subjects. I
haven’t found a study about it with a quick search.

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AstralStorm
I prefer the word robust. Where most if not all reachable failure states are
not total disaster.

The other word is reasonable: failure states are possible to reason about
immediately, correctly and fully.

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Timothycquinn
I wonder how much troubleshooting and debugging strategies in early designs
play into the long term niceness of systems. Software and hardware developers
who love debugging wicked systems may likely lead to the development of wicked
products and processes. If debugging is a first class deliverable of the
project then maybe the end product will be less wicked?

I have seen so many complex systems that are wicked to debug as they had
absolutely no formal debugging strategy. Many failed as a result of this.

Needless to say, I am a big debug first kinda guy.

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throwaway-1436
Reminded me of Bret Victor's dynamicland and this course on quantum computing:
[https://quantum.country/qcvc](https://quantum.country/qcvc).

It's easy to forget that we can use all sorts of technology as mental crutches
for making environments more kind and learnable.

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executesorder66
It's interesting that a guy in Seattle has a South African TLD for his blog.

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emmelaich
He got his Phd from Cape Town Uni and probably grew up there.

My limited experience of SF left with the impression that fewer than 10% of
people who work there grew up in CA let alone SF.

Seattle is probably similar.

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executesorder66
> He got his Phd from Cape Town Uni and probably grew up there.

Yeah, I couldn't find anything on his site about that. Where did you find that
info?

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scarejunba
His LinkedIn.

By the way, with no judgment intended, the way your statements are worded is
noticeably non-normative. Thought you might like to know.

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executesorder66
Thanks. I don't have a LinkedIn profile, so I wouldn't have been able to see
that anyway.

What do you mean by non-normative? Can you give an example of a "normative"
version of my statements?

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scarejunba
No, if I do I will be downvoted and that will impact my ability to post here.

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em-bee
huh, how so? downvotes on a single comment won't impact you at all. i'd also
like to know what you mean.

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scarejunba
If you're sufficiently downvoted you'll get soft-banned. I'm sort of on the
threshold already.

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em-bee
hmm, i think that should only happens with moderator intervention. if it
happens they'll see that your response was requested, so as long as it doesn't
contain any rants or attacks it should be fine.

