acronyms
As a commenter noted in my previous post on how not to give a presentation, I have another complaint about software development presentations that I didn't list. They're chock full of meaningless acronyms. SOAP, BI, SOA, RDBMS, SGML, CRUD, RMS, RDBMS, XML, ORM, FAQ. I appreciate
triage
One thing that continually frustrates me when working with dedicated test teams is that, well, they find too many bugs. Don't get me wrong. I want to be the first person to know about any bug that results in inconvenience for a user. But how do you distinguish
usability
Jensen Harris recently cited some Microsoft Office usability research which produced a rather counter-intuitive result [http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/11/29/497861.aspx]: > One of the most interesting epiphanies I've had over the last few years seems on the surface like a paradox: "
software development
In Humanizing Peer Reviews [http://www.processimpact.com/articles/humanizing_reviews.html], 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
regex
I was intrigued by a recent comment from a Microsoft Hotmail developer on the ptifalls they've run into while upgrading Hotmail to .NET 2.0: Regular Expressions can be very expensive. Certain (unintended and intended) strings may cause RegExes to exhibit exponential behavior. We've taken several
software development
A co-worker and I went over to Scott's house today at around 1pm PST to pick something up for work. Scott just got a new television, so he demoed it for us, flipping through the channels, comparing HD signals to regular signals and so forth. As we were
software development
For better or worse, I've been a Microsoft fan since Windows 3.1. Microsoft is far from perfect, but the alternatives were always so much worse. Can you imagine a dystopian future where we're all running IBM's OS/2 2004 and Lotus Notes Express?
ui/ux design
Ever wonder how you could possibly find something in that complex, ten-tabbed options dialog? How about a search function on the options dialog, as featured in Quest's Toad for SQL Server [http://www.quest.com/toad_for_sql_server/index.asp]: Aside from the fact that it'
.net
The first rule of performance testing is to measure, then measure again, then measure one more time just to be sure. NET 2.0 adds a handy Diagnostics.Stopwatch [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.stopwatch.aspx] which is perfect for this kind of ad-hoc precision timing. A
programming practices
Who files better bugs? Users or developers? In How to Report Bugs Effectively [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html], Simon Tatham notes that software developers, contrary to what you might think, file some of the worst bug reports: > It isn't only non-programmers who produce
software development
It's a shame that Beyond Compare isn't listed in more "favorite tool" lists. This amazing little folder and file differencing tool has earned its spot in my core toolset a dozen times over. Here's a screenshot of it in action: I'
specifications
The guys at 37signals think functional specs are worthless: Don't write a functional specifications document. Why? Well, there's nothing functional about a functional specifications document. Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real