December 10, 2008
TDD: I Want to Believe
You'd think as an agile coach that I would be fervently advocating all things agile, but that's not the case....
September 25, 2008
Agile Accelerators
Having seen scads of projects that are agile over the years, quite frankly I'm sick of talking about agile. Who's more agile than whom? Is there such a thing as agile maturity? If so, does it mean something useful? Can...
July 23, 2008
Doing the Big "O"
I've been away from blogging for a while, working on a small project I have on the side. So my days have been mostly spent with getting up at 4, coding for 2 hours, working 10-11 hours, then coding for...
July 2, 2008
Grid Hell
So I'm writing a short ASP.NET program. And I've entered Grid Hell....
June 5, 2008
It's not Just Testing
Lately when we talk about making sure our code is done well, we talk about various types of testing -- unit, system, stress, integration, performance, etc. But it's not just testing. Everybody knows (or should know) what a code walkthrough...
May 2, 2008
Delta Airlines Can Go Jump in a Lake
I hate blog rants, but there are times when you just don't have any other options to complain to anyone. I'm a happy person, and I love writing happy articles, but sometimes you get frustrated and have nothing esle to...
April 29, 2008
Tell me What I Think
I don't watch a lot of TV. But I have noticed that more and more, TV is not only telling me what to buy, but what to think. For me it started with Battlestar Galactica. I was excited that the...
March 14, 2008
Meeeting the Mucky-Mucks
It's good to know whether you are designing the nuclear power plant or driving the technicians to the site I have kind of a weird job. While I help large organizations run their software teams a lot faster, I'm also...
March 3, 2008
Explaining Modeling
I have been talking to some friends who are more into Agile with a big A than I am over the past couple of weeks. One of the topics was the purpose and use of modeling in developing software. On...
January 25, 2008
Seven Things I Hate About Agile Literature
I'm an Agile Coach. That means I help teams adopt agile practices to make time-to-market shorter. I love agile with a little "a" But I have a confession to make: as much as I love the concepts in Agile and...
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January 16, 2008
SPRING and OSGI
I've been consulting with a small Java team that's implementing SPRING and OSGI I could tell you what they are doing but then I'd have to shoot you, so let's just say they're doing neat stuff. I haven't poked around...
December 25, 2007
It's not the Code, Stupid
Programming is not about programming. I came to this realization after reviewing my XP and Agile books as part of an engagement for a large client. I must confess that each time I start on my XP books I have...
December 18, 2007
Test your Installs
Lesson for the day -- always test your installs. If you don't, this could happen to you.Shortly after releasing EVE Online: Trinity at 22:04 GMT on Wednesday, 5 December, we started receiving reports that the Classic to Premium graphics content...
December 12, 2007
Philosophy and Software Development
Recently one of my large clients asked me to come out and look at their development process. It underscored even more to me the relationship between philosophy and software development....
November 9, 2007
How Many Fishes for the Gladiator?
I am not a fan of machine translation. I guess for some things it's fine, but I have played around with it off and on for years and it just never seems to work the way it is supposed to....
November 2, 2007
It's the Data, Stupid
With news today that Google is releasing news of its support for OpenSocial API, the light finally went on in my head. It's the data, stupid....
October 27, 2007
Is F-Sharp Enough?
Ready for prime time? I've gotten the functional programming bug lately. Most of my career after I learned my third language or so, I could care less what the language is -- just let's solve it already, ok? But lately...
October 22, 2007
It's an O/S, it's a Browser
Cool! Silverlight will run on linux! So I'm thinking about my next project, a small app to write over the next few months while I'm filling the piggy bank back up and working on finding cofounders, and it occurs to...
October 20, 2007
Talking Head Roundup
I have a secret vice. It's watching political talk-shows. As a right-leaning libertarian, somehow I started watching these shows back in the days of Bush I and Clinton even though I "didn't have a dog in the fight", as Clinton...
October 16, 2007
Anti-Google: the Future of Social Networking
What media do you want to consume today? It seems like a strange question -- obviously you're already consuming stuff so you must know -- but yet are you really consuming the stuff you'd like to? Whatever time you spend...
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October 15, 2007
Recommendation-Consumption Impedance Mismatch
There's been a terrific discussion around social sites both here and other other parts of the blogosphere. It seems to me that content selection systems swing out of whack after achieving a certain level of growth, as I pointed out...
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October 14, 2007
Voting up or down is dead
Look. I know the arguments. Let's say you're creating a social web site, that is, a place where people can do stuff and other people can recognize them for what they are doing (even if it is just scratching their...
October 10, 2007
Social Networks and ADD
There have been three memes lately in the world of startups that I think are connected: Social Networks degrade over time - or as put by CmdrTaco from Slashdot: Look at Reddit. It started small with smart people. As it's...
August 15, 2007
Top Ten Movie TechnoFarts
Great for the 1950s. Not so much today. I just got through watching a really bad movie. So bad I almost ran through the house yelling "My eyes! My eyes!" The lead actress was so ugly she went trick-or-treating...
July 27, 2007
Javascript and Kindergarten
I've done all sorts of programming. Back in the day, I started with DBase, then AppleBasic, then C. I moved through a bunch of stuff. I've written all kinds of cool, web 2.0, cutting-edge programs. Somewhere along the way, I...
May 17, 2007
Is Modeling Science?
In arriving at a scientific law there are three main stages: The first consists in observing the significant facts; the second in arriving at a hypothesis, which, if it is true, would account for these facts; the third is deducing...
April 29, 2007
MIT: Where are your Values?
I've had a love/hate relationship with higher education for most of my life. There are many things about the collegiate and university community that give us our greatest, best hope for the future. But there are also things about the...
April 4, 2007
I'm not Warming up to Global Warming
Ok, I'm trying. Really I am. For the last week or two I've listened to several hours of a prominent physicist explain Global Warming to me. I love The Teaching Company, and this is probably the 10th series of college-level...
March 25, 2007
My StressMaster Chair is Stressing me out
I've had a stressful last couple of weeks. One of my clients is in a bind as far as needing enterprise software, I have a couple of contracts that are ending, some of my students are starting to ask really...
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February 26, 2007
What's Your Software Purchase IQ?
Here's a nifty checklist to determine whether or not you are covering all of the bases when making a software purchase....
February 21, 2007
Finding the Fun in Technology
If this is your first time visitng the blog, here are some funny and insightful articles about technology and technology management. I think you'll like them. If you're a technology person, they are bound to ring true. And if you...
January 16, 2007
Derived Confusion from the Unified Process
I had a customer recently that just had fits over derived artifacts. I felt badly for them, because derived artifacts take a little bit of consideration....
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November 1, 2006
Signs You Have Too Little Process
Is this all of your project documentation? Is it on a napkin? I don't like rules very much. And I hate, really hate, paperwork. So how did I end up as a process expert? I finally realized that good process...
October 19, 2006
Don't Say I Didn't Warn You
One of the "Futuristic Warning Signs" on a site I viewed today...
September 19, 2006
Captivated by HDR
When I was a teenager, I used to take pictures for my school newspaper. I really liked it: getting into games for free, getting a lot of attention from fans, players, and cheerleaders. I even got to learn how to...
August 30, 2006
Those Weather Channel Guys
Come on guys, it's the stupid title bar! Surely you can check that when you do a build Ok. I'm going to start getting all of my news from the Weather Channel website. I've already blogged about how the Wednesday...
July 24, 2006
Building Blocks
I was reading over on slashdot today about a neat operating system called "Plan 9". For those of you who aren't film buffs, the operating system is named after the famously bad movie"Plan 9 From Outer Space". So what makes...
July 6, 2006
Weather Channel Scoops CNN
i was waking up this morning, reading my email, feeds, and favorite web pages, when I came across this from the weather channel. I had to read it twice.
June 26, 2006
Consultants: Who Needs 'Em?
I've been in technology management consulting for over 20 years, starting off in the Blue Ridge Mountains and ending up in places like San Francisco, Detroit, and Washington, DC. My clients have included Charles Schwab, the INS, Ford Motor Company,...
June 15, 2006
Is Your Project Off-The-Rails?
In an ongoing public service to my fellow programmers, and an attempt to keep from working as much as possible, I hereby offer you these signs that your project might be off the rails.
June 13, 2006
Signs You Are Living in a Matrix
God may be a programmer, but I've done some code slinging myself, and I think it's time we programmers helped out the folks in other universes.
June 7, 2006
Hosting Providers: Love 'em or Leave 'em
I used to say I have been very happy with using a hosting provider. But lately, I'm not so sure. Here's a round-up of the current bugs we're working on batBack and their status.
Sixteen Hints That Your Program Might be Buggy
As those of you who have read the blog know, I have a small start-up web application that I think is really cool. I'm still doing programming, management, and technology consulting, but I am also writing this program and doing user support. In the interest of sharing with you some of what I've learned, here are SIXTEEN HINTS THAT YOUR PROGRAM MIGHT BE BUGGY
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May 21, 2006
OOP-Man versus the Forces Of the Octopus
Recently a reader told me that partial classes were good for cases where one class had to implement multiple interfaces. What are you going to do, for instance, if you have a class that has to implement seven interfaces, each...
May 18, 2006
Attack Of The Interface Octopus
During my recent rant about partial classes being a bad idea, a commenter said something like "Yeah, but I have a bunch of interfaces to implement in this one class, so of course class is going to get huge. Partial classes let me separate the different interfaces into different files"
How Big Should Your Class Be?
Digg picked up the article linked below. One of the comments was really insightful:
Partial Classes. Totally Stupid?
Is it just me, or is partial classes the dumbest thing to come out of Redmond in a long time?
May 8, 2006
Plato and OOP: Together Again
I'm taking my hour of exercise each morning and listening to a tape series about great thinkers in Western culture. Today I learned some about Socrates and Plato. If you are a C++, Java, or C# programmer, you should take some time to learn about those dudes who lived a long time ago and wore togas. After all, they're the ones who really created analysis and OOP.
May 1, 2006
Brian Pomeroy: Lost in the Ether
One of the trade-offs I'm always struggling to make as a programmer is how much instrumentation to put in my code. Instrumentation is when the program writes to a log or somehow keeps track of what it is doing while it is doing it.
April 26, 2006
The Seven Best Classic Rock Songs To Code To
I think I'm more productive when I code and listen to music. Do you? What's your favorite Rock-n-Roll songs to code by and why?
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April 22, 2006
One thing, two things, three things, 27
Why is it that stuff is so clustered?
Hooked on Beethoven
I've got an earworm like I've never had before. You have to help me get rid of it.
April 8, 2006
Same Lesson, Different Day
One of the things I hate the most about programming is when you make the same mistake twice.
March 22, 2006
Is Microsoft ATLAS for me?
I have an AJAX application that I've written, and I'm thinking about whether to use the ATLAS tools from Microsoft to help me develop it.
March 21, 2006
Atlas At Last
Yesterday I got my first peek at Microsoft's new ATLAS framework. I'm going to tear it apart, but first a couple of warnings.
March 16, 2006
It's Always Something
The show goes on.
March 15, 2006
Why is it Always an Art Project?
I'm getting ready this morning to go to speak at the Region 2000 Wired Wednesday luncheon. As those of playing along at home know, I've done a bunch of speaking engagements over the last year or two. Can somebody tell...
February 7, 2006
Make it up
It's all about the jargon.
December 23, 2005
Sad State Of Science
Let's imagine you pay an accountant or attorney. His job is to provide answers to technical questions you may ask. He's not the strategist -- he's just telling you what the facts are. But every time you ask him a question, you have a 80% chance of him being wrong.
That's where we are today with modern scientific research.