I'm Sean McBride, a military veteran turned Software Engineer.
I code with Honor, defend the Just, and pursue lofty undertakings on the Cutting Edge
The federal government is rethinking OMB Circular A-76, which historically has treated engineering as "commercial activity" to be outsourced, including core custom software, fueling sole-source…
Generative and agentic AI applied to mainframe COBOL modernization is one of the most underrated shifts in the software industry. It's been about a decade since I last worked with IBM mainframes, so I…
I've heard LLMs brought up in the context of legacy code modernization. Here are some lessons learned I've had digging into using agentic coding techniques with Fixed Format COBOL on the Exercism…
Wanted to give an update since it's been about a month since I started casually exploring post-sabbatical job opportunities. Essentially, I've learned that I'm very picky, and the market is very light…
I've come to believe that calling yourself a "systems programmer" or "systems hacker" is maladaptive for career planning. With rare exceptions, people in industry who write "systems code" are really…
After a pretty intense slog, I've made it through Coplien's Advanced C++ book from 1992. This has likely been the most difficult C++ book I've ever read, especially compared to some of the easy…
People complain about RAII, but at least you can look that acronym up. Sure, "Resource acquisition is initialization" might have the air of a really clever Danish witticism that got a bit mangled by…
A few weeks ago, I committed the grave sin of confusing the Apple II and Commodore 64 floppy disk drives! Mea Culpa! As penance, I chose to read Michael Swaine's Fire in the Valley, an engaging…
I'm taking some flak for having worked at CrowdStrike. It's understandable that folks feel this way. The outage was serious and historic. My wife's medical clinic couldn't access EMRs for a week. I…
Motivation American Programmers currently have a lot of anxiety about LLM-related job loss and a recent resurgence of job offshoring. In many ways, this environment is very similar to the early 1990s…
The IBM Personal Transport (PT) comes with LuxeDrive technology, freeing you to take your hands off the wheel and THINK. Its advanced Watson AI learns your routes and preferences, delivering a safe…
Computer programmers on the cusp of the Generative AI revolution are in a position eerily similar to that of data processing professionals at the dawn of the timesharing revolution. A Flashback to…
Hard to believe, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of iTunes podcasts. It took decades, but after the "podcast election," one thing is undeniable: authentic human voices—recorded cheaply and…
Sally: Daddy, Daddy! What's a programmer? Dad: Ah, Sally, that's an old-fashioned word for a job people used to have. Your great-uncle Steve was a programmer, and back then, it was one of the most…
Computers work with text by encoding characters in an alphabet as numbers. There are several natural questions when considering character encoding: What alphabet would we like to encode? Do we care…
In his classic software engineering essay, No Silver Bullet, Fred Brooks argues that software complexity can be broken into two types. The first is essential complexity emergent from the problem…
Looking back at POSIX When it comes to software, standards are an important tool to protect against “lock-in.” Back in the day, this was accepted as common knowledge. Academics (ACM, IEEE), industry…
It’s getting popular to discuss burnout, which is great! It’s a conversation we need to have to counteract the self-promotional hustleporn that over-emphasize unhealthy work habits and suggests that…
I am not a long-time Io enthusiast. I'm just a polyglot developer backpacking across different language ecosystems with a sense of curiosity and the software equivalent of a Rick Steves' travel guide:…
Ancient Rome has always fascinated me. On the one hand, it created the most professional pre-modern military and conquered much of the known world. On the other hand, it embraced and expanded the…
Recently, my friend Kait Moreno and I have started a YouTube video series to follow our progress as we go through The Rust Programming Language. If you haven't seen this yet, please consider clicking…
As I've gotten older and gained perspective on my life, I've concluded that many aspects of my personality and career have been broadly shaped by the era, location, and community of my childhood. In…
I am not a professional mainframe developer. I'm just a polyglot programmer backpacking across different language ecosystems with a sense of curiosity and the software equivalent of a Rick Steves…
I am not a Rubyist. I'm just a polyglot developer backpacking across different language ecosystems with a sense of curiosity and the software equivalent of a Rick Steves' travel guide: Bruce A. Tate’s…
A key assumption behind my decision to go back to grad school was that I would be free to engage in passion projects and creative coding. Alas, phrases like "that does not sufficiently advance the…
Some species of sharks need to stay in motion to stay alive If oxygen-rich water is not flowing across their gills, they cannot breathe Thus it is for many species of software engineers If dopamine…
According to the WSJ, (HQ2)/2 is moving to Crystal City! For those of you not taking the GREs today, that means half of HQ2 is coming to the DMV and the other half is going to Long Island in Long…
All good things come to an end, and with Grey Matter Dashboard at 2.0, I've decided that it's now a appropriate time for me to pass the baton and move on from Decipher. It was an honor to be a part of…
On Wednesday, October 17th, Operation Code DC gathered for our second meetup since the relaunch of our chapter. We were hosted by GE Aviation in downtown Washington, DC. The GE Aviation staff went…
On August 28th, 2018, about 28 military, veterans, military spouses, and civilian allies gathered at Capitol Post to relaunch Operation Code's DC chapter. I think that's a pretty great turnout for a…
This past weekend, I finally made it through ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer by Scott McCartney. After originally purchasing this book from Audible in 2012, I quickly…
As I've gotten older and gained perspective on my life, I've concluded that many aspects of my personality and career have been broadly shaped by the era, location, and community of my childhood. In…
After a decade of career compromises, I'm finally following my passions Ideally, when someone graduates from college, they should understand their interests and aspirations and map that to a career…
Earlier today, I was pleased to discover that FedEx had shipped me an important package. No, this wasn't Christmas a week early (...or was it???). It was the brand-new Pixel phone and Daydream VR set…
Come this way, honored Odysseus... and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing; for no one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship until he has listened to the honey…
Why this reference? After the first week of my junior phase at Fullstack Academy, it's clear to me that Regular Expressions is a concept that I need to master quickly. In the past, I've usually…
Yesterday, some of my colleagues in Operation Code's Slack channel were expressing some concerns about outsourcing and the impact that this might have on their careers. Given all of the election…
One hundred years ago today, General Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, a man known for strong Christian beliefs and eccentric spiritualism (supposedly he had spoken with Napoleon…
On April 7, 1964, Tom Watson Jr. stood at the front of a conference room in IBM's Poughkeepsie, NY research lab. Looking beyond the podium and out into the audience, Watson saw two hundred influential…
A few months ago, IBM slapped me on the wrist. No, this wasn’t really physical punishment or like . Rather, it was a Notes Inbox slap named
Mac 3270? Water and Vinegar? How Mainframers began to use Macs It may seem strange to think that users, application developers, and systems programmers of IBM mainframes may use a Mac 3270 solution…
Thanks to organizations such as , the techie community is increasingly starting to think about ways to leverage their engineering skills in volunteer public service projects. I…
Many of you know that I've had already had a handful of careers during my 27.5 years of life. Besides working in technology and serving in the Army, there was a brief period when I was a History PhD…
Despite derision as a dinosaur doomed to gradual extinction, a recent breakthrough in mainframe technology has the potential to transform the world of modern data centers. On July 22, 2010, IBM…
With IBM moving towards Cloud Computing and the zEnterprise turning into a “Cloud-in-a-box,” it is increasingly important to track developments in the public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space…
VMWare and Full Virtualization In the early days of distributed computing, many experts considered x86 virtualization near to impossible due to the complexity of the platform. In contrast to the…
Praise to God for his many blessings! I have so much to be thankful for. Firstly, I was able to survive my 15 credit hour semester at IIT with a pretty respectable GPA and a published paper. My…
It’s difficult to believe, but I am now working through Midterms week of my first of two semesters for my Masters of IT Management program. Glancing back at my blog, I see that my last post on…
As many of you know, I have been pretty hesitant to go back to school. It’s been nearly two years since I’ve had a traditional paycheck. This is not to imply that Georgetown University was not a lot…
This morning was my Rite of Acceptance into the Roman Catholic church. For those unfamiliar with the process, Wikipedia provides a reasonable explanation of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults…
I am currently working through three career books. is more-or-less a guide for humanities majors trying to figure out how to make their interests and coursework (seem…
I thought that it would be a useful exercise to publish my thoughts as I work towards getting to know myself a bit better. I am a recently-married West Point graduate that was medically retired from…
"What the Academy stands for has always been my guide throughout my military career, and to have approached the high ideals of duty, honor, and service to country that are the real spirit of West…