It's that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new ye … | Continue reading
It's that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new ye … | Continue reading
It's that time of year again... well, actually, a few days late, but I've been busy, I swear. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years’ predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I thi … | Continue reading
It's that time of year again... well, actually, a few days late, but I've been busy, I swear. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years’ predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I thi … | Continue reading
tl;dr By now, everybody has heard of the memo that was passed around by the Google-bro, claiming that Google should reduce its efforts at explicit diversity hiring and how his message was unwelcome within Google's halls; my reaction is that he had a small point, but it was drowne … | Continue reading
It's that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new ye … | Continue reading
tl;dr As part of preparing for a workshop next week in Poland, I've been diving back into the CLR source code---which takes me back to my old friend, Rotor. For those of you who came to the CLR late, back in 2002 Microsoft offered up an open-source version of the CLR called the S … | Continue reading
More than a decade ago, I published Effective Enterprise Java, and in the opening chapter I talked about the Ten Fallacies of Enterprise Computing, essentially an extension/add-on to Peter Deutsch's Fallacies of Distributed Computing. But in the ten-plus years since, I've had tim … | Continue reading
tl;dr In a recent blog post, a commenter asked some questions that I felt were a bit more easily answered in the main blog format than in comments. Specifically, he asked two of the more common "How do I..." questions---finding motivation, and finding time. In the "The Value of F … | Continue reading
James Ward also wrote an article on how to write abstracts, and I realized after I published that I forgot to call out to his article as well. Mea culpa. First off, James' post is here, and for the most part, I think we agree on most things. Where he says "Make the title clear, c … | Continue reading
tl;dr At last night's Seattle Languages meeting, I was reminded of what intellectually-honest debate does and does not look like; then, as part of the discussions and argument around the tragic deaths of several black men at the hands of police, I was presented with a link to a p … | Continue reading
tl;dr Once again I find myself in the position of needing to call BS on a blog post and deconstruct it: Yes, it is possible to be a good .NET developer, and here's why. First, as always, if you've not read the original, check it out. Again, I'll be quoting from it, so you needn't … | Continue reading
tl;dr Celebrating success is always a welcome thing. But in a lot of ways, the people we should be celebrating are the ones who failed, and then learned from it. As a matter of fact, there's a reasonable correlation to be drawn here---that those who are truly successful are the o … | Continue reading
tl;dr Recently the Harvard Business Review ran an article on how readers could prepare for difficult business situations, using the analogy of coaches preparing their teams for different eventualities by simulating those eventualities on the practice field. There's lessons to be … | Continue reading
tl;dr 20 years ago, the "Gang of Four" published the seminal work on design patterns. Written to the languages of its time (C++ and Smalltalk), and written using the design philosophies of the time (stressing inheritance, for example), it nevertheless spawned a huge "movement" wi … | Continue reading
tl;dr Peter Verhas asks a seemingly innocent question during a technical interview, and gets an answer that is not wrong, but doesn't really fit. He then claims that "Sometimes I also meet candidates who not only simply do not know the answer but give the wrong answer. To know so … | Continue reading
tl;dr A Forbes.com article Q/A recently stated that job-seekers need to hide the fact that they've ever been fired from a position, because of the stigma associated with such an action. I couldn't disagree more. First off, as is common for my posts, read the original, so we all k … | Continue reading
tl;dr By now, everybody has heard that the FBI has issued a request (which is now being backed by a court order to comply) to Apple to provide software to unlock the iPhone 5c of one of the San Bernardino shooters. This is a massive request, with huge implications for everybody ( … | Continue reading
tl;dr Facebook/Parse announced that they are shutting down the popular Back-end-as-a-Service. While opinions are certainly going to vary as to why, I thought it an interesting situation to examine and, upon reflection, comment. As I read the post, a couple of things immediately c … | Continue reading
tl;dr I've been asked a number of times over the years how, exactly, I approach learning new stuff, whether that be a new programming language, a new platform, whatever. This is obviously a highly personal (meaning specific to the individual offering the answer) subject, so my ap … | Continue reading
tl;dr A recent DZone post lamented how logging hours makes the author "die a little inside each time". I used to feel the same way. Then I grew up and got over it. As is typical with my posts, I ask you to go read the original (or in this case, the DZone copy of the original) bef … | Continue reading
tl;dr A recent post on medium.com addresses the topic of technical debt; I had an intuitive disagreement with the thrust of the post, and wrote this as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on the matter. It raises some interesting questions about what technical debt actually is--- … | Continue reading
tl;dr It's been a few years since I did this particular routine for the NFJS shows, but I found a sequence of demos/explanations that really demonstrated clearly why Java (and other classic O-O) developers should learn a little functional programming style, even if they never pic … | Continue reading
tl;dr Don't hedge your answers when somebody is asking you for a commitment; "Do, or do not. There is no try." (Yoda) Saying "maybe" is, at best, your way of preserving your ego, and at worst, your way of trying to avoid a commitment. Michele Leroux Bustamente tweeted her fondnes … | Continue reading
tl;dr I've found a new blog that I'm enjoying reading so far, and thought readers might want to browser-bookmark for future consumption. Twitter sometimes dumps some good stuff into my face, and in this case, this comes to me via James Ward over Facebook. (I think he posted it to … | Continue reading
It's really starting to appear like the "technical monoculture" that so pervaded the 90's and 00's is finally starting to die the long-deserved ugly death it was supposed to. And I couldn't be happier. I was sitting with a buddy of mine in a sports bar. (Yes, it was Canyons. For … | Continue reading
Twitter leads me to some interesting blog entries sometimes, and this time, it led to me to @rands's entry entitledShields Down, which appears to have the subtitle "Happy People Don't Leave the Jobs They Love". In it, he's got some good discussion about being a manager and the re … | Continue reading
As many readers know, I didn't spend my collegiate years studying algorithms; instead, I obtained my degree from UCDavis in International Relations with an emphasis on military strategy and history. That meant a tremendous amount of study in history, pyschology, a little philosop … | Continue reading
Or, why passwords must be eight characters. This just crossed my Facebook feed: Take five chimpanzees. Put them in a big cage. Suspend some bananas from the roof of the cage. Provide the chimpanzees with a stepladder. BUT also add a proximity detector to the bananas, so that when … | Continue reading
As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new year has to offer us. In 2015... As per previous years, I'm giving myself either a … | Continue reading
An open letter to software developers all across the world. Dear Software Consultants, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you were lied to when we hired you. Your job isn't about code at all. The interview process was kind of a train wreck (and, yeah, about that, sorr … | Continue reading
It's that time of year again.... First, as always, we revisit the predictions I made last year, and see how well they stacked up. (Because, as I've said before, anybody can make predictions without going back to measure your accuracy; I believe in accountability, even to my own s … | Continue reading
There's been a fair amount of conversation around how to recruit software developers effectively. I've participated in some of it. But just today, a blog post crossed my desk(top) and finally prompted me enough to get around and blog about it. In "Resumes Suck. Here's the Data", … | Continue reading
Here we go again: the annual review of last year's predictions, and a set of new ones for the new year. 2013 Retrospective Without further ado, first we examine last year's Gregorian prognostications: THEN: "Big data" and "data analytics" will dominate the e … | Continue reading
Remember when I posted about speaking for free at conferences? And everybody got so upset? Because, you know... community! Somebody tell me how this is any different. When a conference chooses not to offer its speakers even a modest stipend beyond expenses (and let's not even beg … | Continue reading
In the past, I've been asked about my thoughts on conferences and the potential "death" of conferences, and the question came up again more recently in a social setting. It's been a while since I commented on it, and if anything, my thoughts have only gotten sharper and clearer. … | Continue reading