software development
Steve McConnell on diseconomies of scale in software development: Project size is easily the most significant determinant of effort, cost and schedule [for a software project].* People naturally assume that a system that is 10 times as large as another system will require something like 10 times as much effort
regex
The Visual Studio IDE supports searching and replacing with regular expressions, right? Sure it does. It's right there in grey and black in the find and replace dialog. Just tick the "use Regular expressions" checkbox and we're off to the races. However, you'
programming concepts
Reginald Braithwaite's favorite interview question is an offbeat one: sketch out a software design to referee the game Monopoly.* I think it's a valid design exercise which neatly skirts the puzzle question trap. But more importantly, it's fun. Interviews are a terror for the
orm
I had an opportunity to meet Ted Neward at TechEd this year. Ted, among other things, famously coined the phrase "Object-Relational mapping is the Vietnam of our industry" in late 2004. It's a scary analogy, but an apt one. I've seen developers struggle for
software development
I'm currently reading Steve McConnell's new book, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735605351/codihorr-20]. The section on individual expert judgment provided one simple reason why my estimates are often so horribly wrong:> If you ask a developer
software maintenance
Mention the words "maintenance programming" to a group of developers and they'll, to a man (or woman), recoil in horror. Maintenance programming is widely viewed as janitorial work. But maybe that's an unfair characterization. In Software Conflict 2.0 : The Art and Science of
health
Software developers, like pianists, rely on their hands to practice their craft. I've used a keyboard and mouse obsessively since my early teens. Fortunately, I have never had any problems with hand or wrist pain – nor have I experienced any Repetitive Stress Injury, which includes carpal tunnel syndrome.
communication
One of the funniest things on the internet, for my money, is Eric S. Raymond's epic FAQ, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]. It's 32 pages, 1,066 paragraphs, 10,289 words, and 51,757 characters. That
management practices
Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools list just selected a book from my recommended reading list. And it's one of my favorites, too. It's that perennial evergreen of project management, Peopleware: Hard-won wisdom fills this small book: How to create a team, place, or company that
programming practices
From an audio interview with Ron Jeffries: The reason the kitchen is a mess is not because the kitchen is poorly designed, it's because we didn't do the dishes after every meal. Michael Feathers recently wrote an eerily similar entry about the professional chef's
interview questions
Here's a not-so-gentle reminder from David Pickett that some programming interview questions [http://blogs.msdn.com/davidlem/archive/2006/05/16/598696.aspx] – in this case, "how would you write a routine to copy a file?" – are, well, stupid [http://exold.com/article/stupid-interview-questions]*: > Q.
software development
From the IEEE article Why Software Fails: Last October, for instance, the giant British food retailer J Sainsbury had to write off its US $526 million investment in an automated supply-chain management system. Merchandise was stuck in the company's depots and warehouses and was not getting through to