I went to the Boise MSDN event today at a big movie theater and I learned a few things. LINQ is cool. Wicked cool. Mac Book Pro dual booting to Vista x64 cool. LINQ is more than compile time SQL. It is declarative XML trees without a DOM model. In VB, it is also compile time XML, […]
Read MoreAfter a few weeks in our software development environment, a new co-worker told me, “I feel like I am on an episode of Iron Chef.” He came from a structured, design-up-front environment with prescribed architecture and product line development practices. So, although he was expressing some exasperation with a chaotic Agile development process, I choose to take this […]
Read MoreI had a technical conversation recently that reminded me of what it really means to get back to basics in software development. Frankly, I have been managing people and drawing pictures for so long I was initially stumped by some of these. I am ashamed of myself for not having these answers on the tip […]
Read MoreRegarding Elegant Code, I have been an Absent Product Owner lately. Here’s why: My 15 Year Wedding AnniversaryAs of yesterday, my wife and I have been married 15 years. I still marvel that an obstinate geek like me landed such a marvelous woman. She cannot even figure out how to turn on a computer, makes the […]
Read MoreI have been looking for a solution to file sharing with my wife for several weeks. Particularly I wanted her to be able to review and comment on some Word files. Also, I wanted to make some PDF file available for public access. I tried several services including Google Docs (I didn’t want to lose […]
Read MoreA crying child is a very common occurrence in my life. My 4 children range in age from 10 to 6. I know. I am better at math now, but back to the crying child. One of the first things I learned when a screaming child comes running to me is exactly how to triage the situation. […]
Read MoreIf you aren’t familiar with the Widgets of Wisdom feature, see the explanation and disclaimer here. A mock is a stub with assertions Strive for black box unit tests, not testing beyond the interface boundary is ideal. Known Agile smell: Preferring practices over values. Agile is like Churchhill’s democracy, the worst possible solution until compared to […]
Read MoreHave you noticed your estimation meetings lasting hours with only a few items estimated? Do you think it is impossible to get an estimated backlog with 3 months of work in it? Hey, developers. It’s called an estimate. No one is going to stab you if you if it isn’t perfect. You won’t even be […]
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