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 industy” in late 2004. It’s a scary analogy, but an apt one. I’ve seen developers struggle for years with the huge
software development
I’m currently reading Steve McConnell’s new book, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art. The section on individual expert judgment provided one simple reason why my estimates are often so horribly wrong: If you ask a developer to estimate a set of features, the developer will often come back
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 Software Engineering, Robert L.
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. But
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. It’s 32 pages, 1,066 paragraphs, 10,289 words, and 51,757 characters. That you must read before you ask a technical question of
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 is productive. First
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 concept of working
interview questions
Here’s a not-so-gentle reminder from David Pickett that some programming interview questions – in this case, “how would you write a routine to copy a file?” – are, well, stupid:* Q. What about the attributes? A. Make the attributes the same. Q. Should I modify the attributes of the source file?
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 many
software development
Jon Raynor added this comment to my previous post about keeping up with the pace of change in software development: The IT field is basically a quagmire. It’s better to accept that fact right away or move on to a different field. I guess someday I wish for Utopia
software development
Very few software engineers use UML symbols to design software, but electrical engineers regularly use circuit symbols to design electronics: Circuit symbols are constructed into circuit diagrams – the the visual language of electricity: If circuit diagrams are a standard, universally understood way to talk about electronics, why doesn’t UML
best practices
James Bach’s seminal rant, No Best Practices, is a great reality check for architecture astronaut rhetoric. It’s worth revisiting even if you’ve read it before. Some might say Bach’s viewpoint is pessimistic, even cynical: The way to get rich in this world is mainly by making