The Long Downturn: How American Blast Furnace Steelmaking Came Apart
Sherman Cahal
Weirton's 2024 shutdown was the final blow in a slow 60-year decline: how "mini" mills, legacy costs, and lost marketshare undid American blast furnace steel.
industry
Exploring Kenova: Where Steel, Mine Cars, and Insulators Once Stood
Sherman Cahal
A century ago, a stretch of riverfront in Kenova, West Virginia was home to a revolving door of industry, a steel company that collapsed within two years, a mine car manufacturer born from merger, and a spark plug maker turned insulator giant that survived two bankruptcies and a devastating fire....
The Steel Mills of the Wheeling District
Sherman Cahal
Explore the history of the Wheeling, West Virginia, iron and steel district, from its early nail mills to its long decline.
Sync Button Engineers: What DJing Taught Me About the Software Talent Crisis
William Azada
I've been DJing for over two decades. I've also been laid off twice in two years. These two facts are more connected than you'd think.
Inside a Charcoal Blast Furnace: Ironmaking in the 1800s
Sherman Cahal
A 19th-century pig iron blast furnace was more than a single stack: it was a carefully engineered industrial system built into the landscape itself.
Mead Paper and the Industrial Heart of Southern Ohio
Sherman Cahal
The Mead Paper Company’s Chillicothe Works was one of Ohio’s largest paper mills, symbolizing over a century of industrial progress in Ohio.
Bigger isn’t better: the companies scale dilemma
Adrián Mato
We need more companies doing fewer things, fewer features, and requiring fewer employees. Building high-quality software is fun when you have focus and a tight team. The current scale of most teams and the absurd financial goals make a large portion of this industry unbearable. Redistributing...
Human-Centered Approach to Static-Analysis-Driven Developer Tools
Ayman Nadeem
This article was published in the Communications of the ACM and in the ACM Queue issue on static analysis. Correctly harnessing static-analysis techniques in the design of developer tools relies on understanding human intuition. Research advances in the field continue to open up possibilities...