Software Design
Make it run, make it right, make it fast - Douglas Beck, my Pappy
Twenty five years into my career, in 2005, I was invited to sit on a panel with Ed Yourdon & Larry Constantine, authors of Structured Design, the book that introduced the terms "coupling" & "cohesion". Digging into the book in preparation, I realized that these pioneers had long ago laid out the equivalent of Newton's Laws of Motion for software design.
Eighteen years later I finally published Tidy First? A Personal Exercise in Empirical Design, the first book in a series on Empirical Software Design, bringing those concepts to a new audience. This year I published The Good News Factory, an executive briefing on software design aka "why the CFO should care". I'm currently working on the third book in the series, Tidy Together, about teams practicing software design together as they continue to develop features.
My newsletter, Tidy First, gives paying subscribers instant access to chapters as I draft them.
Music
I started playing when my Pappy gave up on the Blue Chip Stamp Store guitar he had bought & my mother enrolled me in Mrs. Card's guitar class in summer school. That was 1969, the tail of the folk boom.
I've played & sang ever since. I don't perform in public. Instead, music for me is an exercise in patterns. I hear the song in my head until I give in & learn it.
I'm privileged to own, or rather borrow, an amazing collection of handmade instruments. I recommend any of these luthiers. I could tell a story about each one.
The patterns, improvisation, and collaboration in music parallel the rhythms of software development.
Speaking
I share insights about software development, team dynamics, and organizational change through:
- International conferences
- Corporate workshops
- Team training sessions
Illuminating the Pattern Language of Life
In an era of ironic detachment, Kent Beck's work stands as a testament to earnest exploration and technical virtuosity. Working primarily in acrylic on glass and mirrors, Beck reinterprets Art Deco's techno-optimism for our digital age, while connecting to traditional artistic processes.
Cityscapes
Beck's cityscapes, rendered through an innovative twist on églomisé, strip urban vistas to their essential element: light. These works capture moments of precarious impermanence – each point of illumination representing both presence and potential absence.
Abstracts
His abstracts begin with a singular gestural impulse, expanding into intricate systems of pattern and color. Maps of the artist's inner world, these pieces operate under an internal logic: a self-imposed rule where identical colors never touch across different patterns, creating a visual harmony that emerges as naturally as a mathematical proof.
This interplay of pattern and color reaches its full potential when executed on mirrors. The patterns create multiple layers of visual information – the painted surface, the viewer's reflection, and the space behind the viewer. The viewer cannot escape becoming part of the image viewed, collaborating, consciously or not, with the artist. Art is transformed from a static picture into a dynamic dance—art as verb, not noun.
Process
Working in glass and mirror demands absolute commitment – there is no "undo", no ability to revise or erase. This irreversibility stands in stark contrast to Beck's background in software development, yet draws upon the same deep understanding of how complex systems evolve from simple beginnings. The results are works that delineate space, compressing the aesthetic whirlwind behind modern software constructs into two dimensions, while the mirror surface adds a third dimension of real-time human interaction.
Beck's work troubles the artificial division between digital and analog realms, highlighting the already-augmented nature of reality and perception. His cityscapes, reduced to points of light against darkness, become meditations on human presence in an increasingly technological world. His abstracts expose patterns of thought as misleadingly-precise lines, colors, and shapes. His work suggests that our attempts to separate human from machine, analog from digital, viewer from art, are themselves patterns we impose on a more complex reality.
Conclusion
In both his nightscapes and abstracts, Beck presents art that provides multiple levels of engagement, from immediate visual pleasure to deeper contemplation of how we perceive and organize our modern world. His work stands as a bridge between technological precision and artistic intuition, offering viewers not just a view into, but active participation in the patterns that underlie contemporary existence.
Poker
When playing poker my chattering mind stills, focused on the cards in front of me, my opponent, the math of the situation, & my own feelings & cognition. Okay, maybe "stills" isn't the right word. I'm fully engaged. That's better.
I write about my poker experiences at Kent Beck Poker
Consulting
I help teams and organizations achieve technical excellence through:
- Team coaching
- Process improvement
- Technical mentoring
- Organizational transformation
Thinkies
I'm often asked, "How did you think of that?" I was surprised to find that I often have an answer, some trick of thinking that I learned along the way that generated the idea in question.
For example, whenever someone says, "We can't do X because of Y," I habitually transform that to, "When Y is no longer true then we can do X." If making Y no longer true seems plausible, I suggest it. "We can't deploy more often because of all the bugs? So you're saying when we have fewer bugs we can deploy more often?" "How'd you think of that?" It's just a trick.
I've been collecting these little idea generators for 30 years. Only recently have I begun speaking about them publicly. I've dubbed them "Thinkies".
My collection of Thinkies numbers around 90. 2025 will mark the first conference to discuss Thinkies and similar approaches to creative thought. Here's a Thinkie tutorial. Paid subscribers to my newsletter receive a Thinkie each week as well as early access to the Thinkies conference.
