professional development

software development concepts

Your Personal Brand

Rajesh Setty has some unusual advice for IT professionals — stop wasting time in the technology skill-set rat race, and start building your personal brand: Jack meets Janet and they start talking. Jack explains who he is and what he does for a living and Janet does the same. While Jack

By Jeff Atwood ·
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communication skills

How Not to Give a Presentation

I hold speakers to relatively high standards. They get paid to present to large groups because they’re ostensibly good communicators. And I cannot believe the beginner mistakes some of the speakers are making here at VSLive. Based on my experiences over the last two days, here are a few

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development

Code Reviews: Just Do It

In Humanizing Peer Reviews, Karl Wiegers starts with a powerful pronouncement: Peer review – an activity in which people other than the author of a software deliverable examine it for defects and improvement opportunities – is one of the most powerful software quality tools available. Peer review methods include inspections, walkthroughs, peer

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Skill Disparities in Programming

I am hardly the world’s best programmer. I’ll be the first to tell you that there are tons of developers out there better than I am. But here's the thing: in the ten years I've been gainfully employed as a so-called professional programmer, I

By Jeff Atwood ·
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