@RuthMalan@mastodon.social

Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 4w ago

I read ‘People who show instead of describe. AI made prototyping cheap. The conversation should start at "try this," not "imagine this."’ in a post about what a hiring manager is lookin for in a product manager … and… We’re going to relearn some lessons the hard way, aren’t we??? What is my problem with that? Ok, it’s hard to guess what’s in my head… So. What problem do you see with that?

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @joe@f.duriansoftware.com

Replying to

“This paper [Naur’s Programming as Theory Building] is so timely in times of LLMs because it gives us a definition for programming that an AI can never do, by definition. A large language model can never form a theory about what it is doing, that simply is not a goal of a language model. An LLM can not (consistently and correctly) answer questions about the code.”

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

“McDermott (McDermott 1976) famously complained about ML researchers’ and programmers’ use of wishful mnemonics (e.g., terms like understand or learn referred to ML), which he considered to be misleading both for researchers and for the public (Salles et al. 2020).” — Naser, M.Z. (2025). On the Philosophical Naivety of Engineers in the Age of Machine Learning. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-025-10304-2 (via @olivia@scholar.social via https://www.linkedin.com/posts/monettdiaz_the-abstract-is-as-also-the-paper-h-activity-7479830429521395712-a8OX)

link.springer.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

This is the post @yvonnezlam@mastodon.social drew my/our attention to: ‘for years, I have been using "draw the bike" as a metaphor for "attempt to recreate your knowledge thereby revealing invisible lack of understanding" TIL there was a paper about it’ here: https://bsky.app/profile/tbabb.bsky.social/post/3mqqoqtwb7k26

bsky.app

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Is systems understanding, system design and architecture more valued in Europe? I get several invites a year to talk and even keynote there, but not the US.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

We have Naur: “The programmer having the theory of the program can explain why each part of the program is what it is, in other words is able to support the actual program text with a justification of some sort.” and Brandolini: "It's developer's (mis)understanding, not expert knowledge that gets released in production" and his Law. And we have: “theories of why the system matters and what matters (to users) and how”

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Then on Monday, September 28 (1-2pm Eastern Time): @testobsessed@ruby.social and @joeltosi@mastodon.social will lead discussion of a chapter from their book “Signals and Levers” (due to be released Sept 23, but we will have a link to the chapter on sign up so folk can do the reading)

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

“So you get bored of it. You go from reading and code-reviewing everything to just skimming it. Soon you barely even do that. LLM code generation breeds laziness, because managing its output is a fucking boring task.” — Elissa Black, in https://goodnameforablog.com/posts/very-average-prototypes/ via @dahukanna@mastodon.social

Good Name For A Blog

Very Average Prototypes

Earlier this year, I decided to give AI coding a go. In general, my emotional reaction to doing so was “anger and frustration”, but I found if I used it carefully it sped up what I was doing. It ate at me because all the ethical arguments against using it were strong. Yet, well, indie game dev is a brutal industry that’s only getting harder, I was feeling dispirited, and doing largely solo dev meant that if I could speed up some aspects of what I do… I should at least consider it.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I’ve asked rooms full of adults to draw bicycles and because it (often) feels vulnerable to do this, it is first a step of vulnerability and trust for me — that folk will do it with goodwill towards me and each other. I mean, drawing at all can be vulnerable, because we have these notions of “good at/not good at” (lessons there too!)… And vulnerable as soon as we can’t fully answer the questions the attempt to bring a bicycle to mind, raises. etc.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Darren Raven on Theory and Design

source (and more at): https://www.instagram.com/p/DUlgYGbDO8q/

instagram.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

I read this Brandolini post and got to “But increased accountability with lowered confidence isn't sustainable.”

And then skipped to and misread the last sentence as “What’s the plan?”

…and I like that better…

source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brando_owning-a-codebase-is-a-balance-of-confidence-activity-7481654033947107328-g1F2

linkedin.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Which invites us to make connections to Margaret-Anne Storey’s “Triple Debt Model” https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3807966 :)

spawn-queue.acm.org

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

OMG y'all! Check out the illustrations in the preview: https://itrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Signals-Levers_Excerpt.pdf Very excited and so looking forward to it, @testobsessed@ruby.social and @joeltosi@mastodon.social !

itrevolution.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@ewolff@mastodon.social and indeed “impossible to capture or write down” is the gist of his point too… :)

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

RE: https://vis.social/@ieeevis/116836615881690668 Sigh. We don’t *collaborate* with AI. The evolving role of *human* scientists? We need to qualify scientists now? We need to be careful with language here.

vis.social

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116998186296305414 Darren Raven: Theory does not explain work, it changes it. If nothing shifts, theory has not been used. Read: bell hooks

mastodon.social

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

my brain rn

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

“Even if my work on access to banking seems to depart from my systems architect profession, in fact it is rooted in it. Ruth Malan gave me the courage to stand for my thinking about larger contexts, Simon Wardley gave me the courage to map the connexions I see, as distant they might seem to others and always go for the dynamic view [..] Mathias Verraes showed through the power of example that there is a very wide community of people developing systems while thinking deeply about the “domain”.”

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

And having that shared experience of “revealing invisible lack of understanding" is quite powerful…

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

but also… there is something about creating rich pictures in a small group under time constraints… that is different when i need to create one to share as an example… the self-criticism is shaped differently…

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

RE: @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

folk unfollow me quite a lot (and who knows how many more have simply muted me lol)…

…probably because i mention my work and workshops…

so anyway,

mastodon.social

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

“The call suggests some questions and the way they are framed betray the way the creators of this call think: there are some “groups” of people who require in-person access (vulnerable, older, younger, digitally excluded, etc.) Only if we could fix them, then “broadcasting” digital banking would suffice. Access will be granted to all.” — Andra Sonea This insight!!

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

A source of images (drawn by a human) to use *with attribution*

Dave Gray’s Connected Company sketches:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davegray/albums/72157626546771488/

flickr.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

To share on LinkedIn (thank you to those who already have!): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ruth-malan-4558153_papersinsystems-activity-7487624207904931840-6ef6

linkedin.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

117F in Phoenix on Friday (that’s 47C)!!!

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Of course, even “the matter of the matter” unfolds in multiple directions: how and why does it matter? what matter is it made of? (And yes, conceptual matter matters too.)

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/116980344826700036

We can become more compassionate people just by reading*, but ideas on things to do are great too

caveats (and nuance and..) needed, i know

Quoting

Fesshole 🧻

@fesshole@mastodon.social

When shopping, if I see a young person working there looking miserable I'll remember their name then write to the store and give them a completely manufactured glowing review. I remember what it was like doing jobs like that and it makes me feel good all evening.

Open quoted post

mastodon.social

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

“(1) agentic tasks are uniquely expensive, consuming 1000x more tokens than code reasoning and code chat, with input tokens rather than output tokens driving the overall cost; (2) token usage is highly variable and inherently stochastic: runs on the same task can differ by up to 30x in total tokens, and higher token usage does not translate into higher accuracy; instead, accuracy often peaks at intermediate cost and saturates at higher costs; (3) models vary substantially in token efficiency”

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

The cost of being opinionated (forming and stating positions forcefully) is that you’ll tend to be wrong a lot. Because situations are messy.

And the cost of being wrong, in credibility terms, is borne disparately, because the tolerances we afford, differ. (This is part of the “undertow” experienced by some groups.)

So we navigate different forcefields. With more of an onus to nuance, and context sensitive clarity, on some.

Both styles have organizational contributions to make.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@adrianco@mastodon.social thanks!! Andra mentioned writing a paper on how systems understanding informed her PhD for a PapersInSystems discussion, but I haven’t wanted to add pressure… but I do need to underscore our interest! :)

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

RE: @RosaCtrl@social.vivaldi.net

great use of the f-word!

social.vivaldi.net

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@roots/116319577584236790 A good account to follow if you want our ideas about “root cause” to be less over-simplified :) (i don’t actually follow it, but every time i see posts boosted into my stream it is such a pleasure!)

Quoting

Roots

@roots@stefanbohacek.online

Pinus sylvestris. https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/1271/ #plants #roots #illustration

Open quoted post

stefanbohacek.online

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

I love a point that @ductape@mastodon.social made about the #PapersInSystems reading and discussions: (paraphrasing from memory) they start to weave into, and inform our thinking/perspective/perspective taking. The combination of reading to discuss, and the ways the work strikes others, and how they relate it to our work, deepens and informs our reading of that paper (or blog post, etc) and our thinking and approach more generally.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Maturana quoted in “a Systems Literacy Manifesto (for Designers)” By Hugh Dubberly (2014)

Source: https://presentations.dubberly.com/system_literacy_2.pdf

presentations.dubberly.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

My shorthand for tech debt? It is what we borrow from the future, by not feeding design learning back into the design of the system. The accumulating cost of delaying that feedback (design repair and design preparation), is higher costs to repair *and* growing impedance… etc…

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

In the #AdventOfSystemSeeing work (over the past 4 advents), I purposefully did not follow a “regularized” path… Because it’s the surprises at the intermingling, that make so much of the difference. Too. The PapersInSystems sequence also has these happy accidents of adjacencies and not, because the sequence comes out of what folk suggest and volunteer to share/lead discussion on.

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

#BandCampFriday Grace Leckey: https://graceleckey.bandcamp.com/album/every-rock-changes-a-song-cycle-for-the-climate-crisis Copeland James: https://copelandjames.bandcamp.com/album/small-talk-2 It’s a good day to get merch and music to support artists this Summer!

graceleckey.bandcamp.com

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116907030769114502 Join us in two weeks to discuss Meadows’ “Leverage Points”? ‘“This is a HUGE NEW SYSTEM people are inventing!” I said to myself. “They haven’t the SLIGHTEST IDEA how this complex structure will behave,” myself said back to me. “It’s almost certainly an example of cranking the system in the wrong direction”’

Quoting

Ruth — of systems & design

@RuthMalan@mastodon.social

Next in our #PapersInSystems discussions: Donella Meadows' "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System." Discussion will be led by @AlexPtakhin@hachyderm.io When: Monday, August 3, 2026, 1PM - 2PM Eastern Time (US/Canada) (19:00 CEST). The Zoom room will remain open until 2:30PM Eastern Time for informal discussion. The reading to support the discussion is at: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ More info/sign up (free, of course): https://ti.to/bredemeyer/psleveragepoints Image source: https://www.complexsystemsframeworks.ca/framework/places-to-intervene/

Open quoted post

mastodon.social

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Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

"When you treat human beings as interchangeable typing machines, you forget what software engineering actually is. THE HARD PART OF BUILDING SOFTWARE WAS NEVER THE TYPING. It is understanding the problem, designing a coherent solution, and taking responsibility for the result."

Modern Software Engineering on LI (Dave Farley)

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/modern-software-engineering_softwareengineering-techleadership-teambuilding-activity-7488552748091863040-cdJn

linkedin.com

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