Three months after writing this essay, I started a new position with a governmental organization. Across from me sat a very clever fellow whose role fell somewhere in project lead, software developer, or team coach. On the surface, his PhD in microbiology made him an odd fit for direct work on a government license tracking system, but it was one of those vague areas of expertise that comes from having a wide range of skills that allows you to see through all the buzz words and jargon to the underlying issues that hit all projects, teams, and problems.
During one of our morning chats, I almost snorted my coffee when he began a rant with a statement to the effect of: "I come from a scientific background, and I don't understand why we don't validate our work as much as we should. How are we supposed to *know*. Its basic scientific method."
Two years later, I decided to share the essay. A basic website, on a standard website publishing platform (Google Sites): nothing fancy. I nearly snorted my coffee again when I see the default populated sample content:
It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.
Richard P. Feynman
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P. Feynman
Again, the theme of needing to "know" arises, first from Feynman, then from whatever group of Google developers felt the need to quote him.
I can imagine the frustration those designers or developers or whatever role they were were feeling the day they selected those two quotes to best express their desire for change. I can personally empathize with their feelings. It is the same sense of frustration that my colleague was expressing, the same sense of frustration expressed over and over again by managers, and employees, within the software industry.
Compounding the frustration is the the same sense of frustration you feel when you realize that there have been effective solutions to the problem for
