programming languages
In 1992, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. In my defense, I had just graduated from college, this was pre-Internet, and I lived in Boulder, Colorado working in small business jobs where I was lucky to even hear about other programmers much less meet them. I
version control
I consider this the golden rule of source control: Check in early, check in often. Developers who work for long periods -- and by long I mean more than a day -- without checking anything into source control are setting themselves up for some serious integration headaches down the line.
version control
When it comes to readily available, free source control, I don't think you can do better than Subversion at the moment. I'm not necessarily advocating Subversion; there are plenty of other great source control systems out there -- but few can match the ubiquity and relative
database management
A little over a year ago, I wrote about the importance of version control for databases. When I ask development teams whether their database is under version control, I usually get blank stares. The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your
software development
Source control is the very bedrock of software development. Without some sort of version control system in place, you can't reasonably call yourself a software engineer. If you're using a source control system of any kind, you're versioning files almost by definition. The concept
software development concepts
I remember when Microsoft announced that Windows 4.0 would be known as Windows 95 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95]. At the time, it seemed like a radical, unnecessary change -- naming software with years instead of version numbers? Inconceivable! How will users of Windows 3.1 possibly
database management
When I ask development teams whether their database is under version control, I usually get blank stares. The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your application against version 1.0 of your database, what do you get? A broken application. And
programming languages
Back in June, I mentioned that my favorite visual differencing tool was Araxis Merge. A co-worker recently recommended that I try out Beyond Compare, so I downloaded the 30-day trial and spent an hour playing with it. It’s definitely comparable to Araxis Merge. And in a lot of ways,