There were very few moments for me during QCon London 2008 of earth-shaking enlightenment — if any. But every hour of the three days of the conference there were insights and guidance that could be tucked away, and reused later to save hours, days or weeks of time elsewhere. Snake-oil salesmen where thin on the … Continue reading
While I’m usually proud of the work I’m involved with, I’m rarely happy for long. There are always ways to improve, and I’m usually dissatisfied by one unmet ideal or another. Almost since I started in this field I’ve been vexed by how much of web development is “urgent” rather than “important”. This is not … Continue reading
Staggering though it may be, it turns out that people are different. It also turns out that certain kinds of people are different to other kinds of people. And a corollary of this is that people who aren’t software engineers tend to have a different perspective to those who are. For example, I spend a … Continue reading
Mishkin Berteig says that rotating developers in and out of a support team should never be considered. I’d argue that he’s wrong, and that it’s often highly desirable and should always be considered. In this article: Background. In which I outline what this is all about. Support rotation is desirable. In which I explain five … Continue reading
Compare and contrast two blog entries that popped up in my RSS reader on the same day last week. In the blue corner Joel O’Software, fighting for private offices. And in the red corner, Martin Fowler, battling it out for continuous collaboration between developers and their customers. Naturally, they’re not really at opposite ends of … Continue reading
