When I was an undergraduate student, a joke went around that had car and computer company executives bragging about whose industry showed the greatest technological innovation.

Commercial software developers put a lot of effort into creating applications with powerful easy-to-use features—yet every new release of a major application or operating system brings at least a few features that leave user forums filled with rage.

Since generative artificial intelligence captured popular imagination a year or two ago, I've heard a lot about "supercharging your productivity with AI" (Microsoft 365), "re-igniting productivity and inclusive income growth" (

Not long after I passed a major birthday this year, the Australian Computer Society's Information Age published an article Too Old to Hire, Too Young to Retire, reporting the frustration of older computing workers feeling ignored by recruiters.

Many treatises on skills required by modern workers—software developers and other kinds of engineer in particular—laud "problem solving", yet few schools or universities teach a course called Problem Solving.

Around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote about research into remote working in software development. At the time, some research approached the topic in an oblique way, insofar as remote working is a part of "global" and open source software development.