The 10x Programmer Problem
There’s a popular technical phrase that seems to be bandied about lately, especially from technical recruiters and folks from Human Resources departments of many organizations. The “10x Programmer”. Or “Rockstar Ninja Programmer”. Or “Super Teenage Ninja Turt-“ …...
How to Survive an IT Emergency
How many of you software engineers have had this happen to you in your career? You’ve been pounding away on a hot keyboard all day long, writing code, sending out e-mail status reports, attending endless back to back meetings and all the other of myriads of tasks...
The Programmer Mentorship Gap
The US Navy has been struggling with some tragic events that have resulted in the loss of their own sailors and multiple ship collisions causing millions of dollars of damage requiring extensive overhauls and repairs of those damaged ships. In fact, the problem has...
NASA’s Ten Commandments Of Programming
I recently stumbled on an interesting link regarding NASA and it’s version of the “Ten Commandments” of computer programming. It’s a compiled list of software design principles and guidelines that, no doubt, came from hard won experience and...
Is Desktop Software Obsolete?
I’m constantly amazed at how much the software development landscape has changed since I first started my professional software programming career nearly twenty years ago. If I had to name THE single pivotal event that steered the ship of software programming in a...
The Dark Side Of Open Source
I recently came across an interesting article about the integrity and security of a major source code repository of the world’s most active and popular programming languages on the planet, in serious danger of being compromised by malicious viruses and malware. No...
The Shiny Technology Problem
If there’s one thing that will excite most software developers, it’s the LATEST SHINY DOOHICKEY. When I was first starting out my professional software development career, it was only a few years after the world wide web was born, so anything internet-related was the...
Rise of the “Business Casual” Developer
A long time ago, in a mainframe far, far away …. there was the programmer priesthood. Back at the dawn of the computer age, post World War II, computers were these hulking behemoths that took up whole floors of buildings and required industrial strength air...
The Most Important Software Development Milestone
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Tao Te Ching (chapter 64) On the day I wrote this specific blog article you’re reading right now, I reached a major milestone in a new enterprise application project I’ve been working on for...
One Language To Rule Them All
“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” – J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings I’ve blogged quite a bit in the past about the rise and importance of Javascript in modern day development. When I...