software development
Are there any programming jobs you wouldn't take? Not because the jobs didn't pay enough, had poor benefits, or limited upside -- but because the work itself made you uncomfortable? Consider the tale of one freshmeat.net writer [http://freshmeat.net/articles/excessive-code-and-excessive-nudity-what-gives]: > Back in
programming languages
One of the more famous Edsger Dijkstra quotes is from his 1972 Turing award lecture, How do we tell truths that might hurt? Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. Note that he specifically
programming languages
On the internet, you can pretend the world is flat. Whatever country you live in, whatever language you speak, you have the same access to the accumulated knowledge of the world as every other citizen of the planet Earth. And a growing percentage of that knowledge can and should be
software development concepts
I've been a longtime fan of Eric Lippert's blog. And one of my favorite (albeit short-lived) post series was his Five Dollar Words for Programmers. Although I've sometimes been accused of being too wordy, I find that learning the right word to describe something
bug tracking
For as long as I've been a software developer and used bug tracking systems, we have struggled with the same fundamental problem in every single project we've worked on: how do you tell bugs from feature requests? Sure, there are some obvious crashes that are clearly
software development concepts
Remember last week when I said coding was just writing? I was wrong. As one commenter noted, it's even simpler than that. [This] reminds me of a true "Dilbert moment" a few years ago, when my (obviously non-technical) boss commented that he never understood why it
programming
In The Programming Aphorisms of Strunk and White, James Devlin does a typically excellent job of examining something I've been noticing myself over the last five years: The unexpected relationship between writing code and writing. There is perhaps no greater single reference on the topic of writing than
ruby
I have decidedly mixed feelings about the book Beautiful Code, but one of the better chapters is Tim Bray's "Finding Things". In it, he outlines the creation of a small Ruby program: counts = {} counts.default = 0 ARGF.each_line do |line| if line =~ %r{GET /ongoing/
software development concepts
I have tremendous respect for Paul Graham. His essays – repackaged in the book Hackers and Painters – are among the best writing I've found on software engineering. Not all of them are so great, of course, but the majority are well worth your time. That's more than
programming languages
I was thrilled to see the book Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think show up in my Amazon recommendations. It seems like exactly the type of book I would enjoy. So of course I bought a copy. Unfortunately, Beautiful Code wasn't nearly as enjoyable of a
software development concepts
I recently received an email from Andrew Stuart of the Australian firm Flat Rate Recruitment. Andrew related their technical phone screen process, which is apparently quite similar to the one outlined in Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right. I'm glad to hear it works. A proper phone screen
programming languages
I saw on reddit that today, January 10th, is Donald Knuth's seventieth birthday. Knuth is arguably the most famous living computer scientist, author of the seminal Art of Computer Programming series. Here's how serious Mr. Knuth is – his books are dedicated, not to his wife or