MAR 18, 2026
What Software Engineering Can Learn from Billions of Years of Evolution
Survival is not elegance. It is adaptation under pressure Nature has been running the longest continuous experimentation process in history…
Essays on engineering leadership, regulated systems, and AI accountability.
Survival is not elegance. It is adaptation under pressure Nature has been running the longest continuous experimentation process in history…
Open source code on GitHub: https://github.com/ballance/transcription In my work with transcription systems, one challenge comes up repeate…
There was a time when the only way to use a computer was to wait your turn. In the early days of computing, machines were so large, so expe…
I used to think the em dash was a red flag. Not in a literary sense, but in a “your robot forgot to sound like you” kind of way. If someone…
On any given evening, Katherine Ballance cracks open the dense PMBOK tome and attacks it with a rainbow of highlighters. She has color-code…
Over the years I have gone from a C++ in the early days building mathematical models for industrial processes to C#, Java, Python, briefly…
Culture isn’t a memo. Every small decision: who you hire, how you handle mistakes, and even what tools you approve, shapes your team. Here’…
I inherited from my father a strong tendency to over-engineer everything I build. Generally, it's a good trait, but it comes with certain t…
Originally published at https://chrisballance.com/2017/03/28/abstract-guilds-of-craftsmen/ While driving back from lunch with a friend the…
Having a written policy keeps any decisions out of the hands of arbitrary choice. Years of working in IT, especially in the financial and m…
Once upon a time, in an economy far far away, the measure of a company was its balance sheet alone. While a company must be profitable in o…
Twenty-four years might be considered a long time for a mentor-ship, but this one was unique, and started way back in 1981. What I didn’t k…
I recently decided to set out on the somewhat mundane task of replacing my (nearly falling over) mailbox with a nicer brick one. It's certa…
Whether you’re asked about the circumference of the Earth, the number of cups in a gallon, or the land speed velocity of an unladen Swallow…
As a student of both my Dad, and Sun Tzu, the following advice has proven useful to me over the years. "The best victory is when the oppone…
This morning, my wife asked me to fix the printer so that she could print some forms. Sure, I could have spent a few minutes fighting with…