Peter Coffee

Pervasive public networks and the explosion of network-facing applications and Web services have dragged enterprise development out of the back room and into the showroom. Customers and supply chain partners are coming to rely on network applications to complete time-critical transactions; government and public safety agencies are incorporating Web services into their missions. In this […]

In a column last October, I warned builders of systems that users literally dont see things unrelated to what the users are trying to do. This makes users almost useless in diagnosing system problems. Ive now learned that users cant even be trusted to tell you if something makes them happy—assuming they notice it at […]

Numerical libraries for C# and Java attack one of the least appreciated but most important problems of the enterprise application developer: Data analysis applications are more difficult than they look. Beyond the equivalent of counting on electronic fingers, computer-based mathematics quickly becomes a quicksand of flawed formulas and unscalable algorithms. Even if calculations are correct, […]

IT providers love to associate their products with the satisfying experience of driving a well-tuned sports car. We hear about “dashboards” and “cockpits” for the enterprise information user; we read about database “engines” and even laptop “airbags.” Fair enough. After all, the desktop metaphor is 21 years old this month, if we date its arrival […]

In the coming year, I doubt that any information technology topic will be more hyped than grid or utility computing. When I talk about grids, Im talking about a technical model; when I talk about utility computing, Im talking about the way that IT is managed and priced. These overlap, though, and both are great […]

When seeking an irresistible force that can shift the immovable object of IT inertia, two candidates come to mind—and only one of them is an Arkansas-based retail chain. “The Wal-Mart Effect” may get the headlines in trendy business magazines, but bigger still is the U.S. Department of Defense—with 3 million uniformed and civilian employees compared […]

My letter of last week, urging that systems be designed to doubt themselves, generated a surprising amount of reader mail for a week when so many offices were closed and so many people were taking time off. Three themes emerged. i) Systems cant be designed to be idiot-proof, at least not at any reasonable cost, […]

My son looked at the minuscule trunk of the rental car, then at our stack of luggage—made larger than usual by an extra suitcase full of Christmas gifts, on their way to their place below the tree at his grandparents house. Politely, but firmly, he said, “No way, Dad.” And something was clearly wrong, because […]

Those who dare to make year-ahead predictions should remember Bill Gates accurate 1997 observation: “There is a tendency to overestimate how much technology will change in the next two years, and a similar tendency to underestimate how much things will change in the next 10 years.” Most predictions of whats ahead look wildly optimistic 12 […]

Every December revisits the (mostly) good-natured debate over holiday letters: those page-length greetings, ranging in tone from a chatty but generic personal letter to a message from a corporate annual report, that families send along with their Christmas cards. If your stack of end-of-year greetings included, in between the cards from the Webers and the […]

Remember Robert McCloskey’s story of Homer Price and the doughnut machine? The thing made doughnuts beautifully, but they couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Complications ensued, and elementary school teachers wound up with an example that they could use to teach principles of supply and demand. Homer and his Uncle Ulysses, just trying […]

Employers can make rules about technology use in the workplace, but they cant tell employees whats in style. Thats a problem as personal technology continues to evolve—from what we have on our desks to what we carry to meetings to what we wear all day. Science-fiction writers got there first. In March 1987, Analog magazine […]