#213 - Moldable Development: Explain Systems & Make Better Software Decisions - Tudor Girba

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Are we looking at software engineering the wrong way?
What if it’s less about writing code and more about making better decisions in an ever-changing system?

Learn a revolutionary approach to understanding complex software systems in my conversation with Tudor Girba, the CEO of feenk. We explore “Moldable Development,” a groundbreaking concept that challenges traditional views of software engineering. Learn why treating development as a decision-making process, supported by custom tools, is crucial for tackling today’s software challenges, especially when dealing with legacy systems.

Key topics discussed:

• Software Engineering as Decision-Making: Why software development is fundamentally about making informed decisions rather than just constructing systems.
• The Inefficiency of Reading Code: Developers spend over 50% of their time reading code, yet this activity remains unoptimized.
• Moldable Development: Learn how creating custom tools tailored to specific problems can revolutionize your workflow and decision-making process.
• Legacy Systems as Opportunities: Reframe legacy systems as value-creation opportunities instead of burdens.
• Glamorous Toolkit: Discover the innovative development environment enabling thousands of micro-tools for better system understanding.
• The Future of Development Environments: Explore how AI, moldable development, and tools like Glamorous Toolkit can coexist to solve diverse class of problems.

This conversation will completely transform how you think about software development!

Timestamps:

• (00:01:57) Career Turning Points
• (00:08:29) Understanding How We Read Code
• (00:10:43) Software Engineering is a Decision-Making Activity
• (00:13:19) Reading Code is a Suboptimal Activity
• (00:16:44) Moldable Development
• (00:22:47) The Challenges with Legacy Systems
• (00:30:17) Moldable Development Workflow
• (00:46:02) Glamorous Toolkit
• (00:54:15) IDE, AI, and Glamorous Toolkit
• (01:00:36) Writing with Simon Wardley
• (01:03:01) 1 Tech Lead Wisdom

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Tudor Girba’s Bio
Tudor Girba is the CEO of feenk, a company focused on modernizing legacy systems. They do that through Moldable Development, a way of programming through contextual tools. They build Glamorous Toolkit, a free and open-source moldable development environment, to show how working through thousands of contextual tools per system can be practical. In 2014, Tudor received the prestigious Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize for his work on modeling and visualisation of evolution and interplay of large numbers of objects.

Follow Tudor:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/girba
• Bluesky – bsky.app/profile/tudorgirba.com
• X – x.com/girba
• feenk – feenk.com
• Glamorous Toolkit – gtoolkit.com
• 📝 Rewilding Software Engineering – medium.com/feenk/rewilding-software-engineering-900ca95ebc8c

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