Category: Software-Technology

Artificial Intelligence Science

AI for Scientific Discovery: Proceedings of a Workshop by the National Academies

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine guide America’s federal research policies based on identifying challenges in the field. This 2024 workshop looked at opportunities within scientific research for artificial intelligence (AI) to contribute. It was led by national experts discussing use cases in their research and attempted to generalize based on those experiences. Most use cases were from American-based science, but AI in Africa was a recurring theme. Overall, the abundance of unique…

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Artificial Intelligence Software-Technology

AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

It’s always daunting to pick up a technical book that’s over 500 pages long or 21 hours long. However, this book did not disappoint. Not every section, of course, addressed my particular needs. However, the entire treatise was clearly communicated with a broader technical audience in mind. That should be no surprise because Chip Huyen, besides being an AI expert, taught graduate school classes in AI at Stanford and writes science fiction as a side…

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Software-Technology

Pair Programming Illuminated

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

Pair programming is a practice in software development whereby two programmers write code together. I’ve studied it from afar until recently. What happened is a colleague asked me to pair program with him. As his program manager from a coding background, we’ve been working with relative success and happiness for several months. I liked the process so much that I wanted to take a deep dive to explore problem areas and tricks of the trade…

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Indie Software-Technology

29 Guidelines for Successful Pair Programming

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

Among software engineers, pair programming occurs when two coders join together to write code together. It’s an incredibly efficient and focused means of knowledge transfer. However, developers are also known for having prickly, sometimes difficult personalities, and these personal hangups can get in the way of effective pair programming. Author Oozie Ligus has logged over 700 hours of time pair programming and offers his advice on how to build an effective relationship. Following “extreme programming”…

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Software-Technology

The Essence of Software: Why Concepts Matter for Great Design

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

In today’s software design, much focus hones in on users’ experience with the interface. Teams make large efforts to make that experience as pleasing as possible so as not to drive away customers. However, they don’t place as much emphasis on the conceptual nature of software – what concepts users extract from the software and what concepts the software requires for effective use. Since the advent of the GUI, today’s software conveys intellectual matter that…

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Cybersecurity Software-Technology

JWT Handbook

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

For those unaware (like me earlier this week), JWT stands for JSON Web Token. JSONs are a standard formats computers on the Internet exchange data in. JWTs are a standardized way to pass encrypted information from a client to a server to prevent tampering. To provide security, it uses modern encryption tools along with a signature and information stored in the header of a web transaction. Thus, web users cannot tamper with information for malicious…

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Artificial Intelligence Indie

Computational Linguistics & Artificial Intelligence

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

I work in software applications in biomedical research. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural interest impacting my work and team. I’m always looking for thoughtful explorations of the topic. I stumbled upon this book on Amazon and thought I’d give the audiobook a try. I’m glad I did. Though Daniel Dinkelman’s work is far from perfect, it provided a helpful survey of the research landscape across the landscape in computational linguistics and AI. It concisely…

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Indie Software-Technology

Software Architecture for Developers: Designing Scalable & Maintainable Systems for the Real World

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

This book provides a succinct overview of the subjects a software architect interacts with on a regular basis in today’s world. That is, it portrays a high-level snapshot of the field in 2024. It summarizes what the current technologies are and lists the different conceptual frameworks software technology uses. Microservices, cloud computing, software as a function, and the packages that oversee it fill the lists that Steve Abrams provides. Its main weakness, however, is that…

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Healthcare Kids Software-Technology

I’m a Biomedical Informatics Expert Now!

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

As someone in his mid-forties, I’m not in the intended audience for this book. Like the author, I went to medical school and work in biomedical informatics. I love figuring out how to help scientists and researchers help advance their ideas to better help patients. Having met and worked with Kevin Johnson, I can say that he’s the perfect person to write this book. He’s super smart but still approachable. He has a consistently great…

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Software-Technology

Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology

By Scott J. Pearson | by Scott J. Pearson

In an age of advanced technology, bugs and glitches have become a part of modern existence. We entrust complex machines like airplanes with our lives without so much as batting an eye. Nonetheless, especially when a technology is being pioneered or developed, there’s no way to escape mistakes… and those mistakes are sometimes fatal and tragic. Technology writer James Chiles describes himself as obsessed with tracing the history of technological mistakes. In this book, he…

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