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  Why Software Projects are Terrible and How Not To Fix Them

If you are a good developer and you’ve worked in bad organizations, you often have ideas to improve the process.  The famous Joel Test is a collection of 12 such ideas.  Some of these ideas have universal acceptance within the software industry (say, using source control), while others might be slightly more controversial (TDD).  But for any particular methodology, whether it is universally accepted or only “mostly” accepted, there are a multitude of o...

   Software,Development,Debug,Design     2011-11-21 10:27:05

  IDC lists top 6 myths, realities about open source

Summary: What are the top 6 myths? That open source software will enter every market, is inherently innovative, it improves faster than commercial software, that it has less lock-in, that it’s free and that it has little benefit if one is not involved in the community. IDC calls these ideas “myths” but acknowledges there’s more than a grain of truth to all of them At its Directions 2012 conference in Boston today, IDC rev...

   IDC,Open source,Reality,Free,Contribution     2012-03-16 08:47:53

  On Programming Deadlines

There are a lot of differences between programming, and programming professionally. The most notorious of which, is deadlines.DeadlinesWhen you're writing code for yourself, you can spend as much (or as little time) on it as you please--but when you're writing code for other people, you've got only a limited amount of time and resources to get the job done. In my experience, this typically leads to one of two situations:You've got to extend the deadline to finish the job properly.You've got to w...

   Programming,Deadline,Transparent,Test,TODO     2011-11-01 07:10:21

  Twitter is the winner of US election

Yesterday, the final result of the U.S. election was that Obama defeated Romney and he was re-election as President of the United States of America, Later he made a victory speech. While in the Internet world, the real winner is not Obama, but Twitter. Why? Because there was no downtime for Twitter yesterday.On election day, There were a total of 31 million election-related Tweets posted, In peak period, there were 327,452 tweets posted per minute,  the peak record was 874,560, about 15,107...

   Twitter, US election,Fail whale     2012-11-08 10:55:38

  The Balanced Developer

In preparation for a recent team offsite, I spent some time thinking about what I hold dear as a software developer. One idea I kept coming back to is the notion of balance. I see balance manifesting itself several ways in the work of a successful developer, some of which follow.Speed Versus QualityThe most obvious example is the balance of development speed and quality. When building software, it’s never a good idea to write code as fast as possible without any attention toward maintaina...

   Balance,Software,Development,Speed,Quality     2011-11-15 03:02:19

  The Best Laptops for Freelancers

Whether you’re answering emails, beating a deadline, or looking for even more freelance gigs, many professionals simply can’t imagine their career without a laptop. It has become the ultimate work gadget of the 21st century, which many laptops now powerful enough to be used like a PC. However, not all freelancers are the same—and as such, require different tools to get the job done. That being said, here are some of the best laptops for every kind of freelancer imaginable. Best...

   APPLE,COMPUTER,HP,LAPTOP     2020-03-04 07:58:12

  One interesting story about Chinese software development

I have once seen an interesting complaint written by one foreigner about Beijing South Railway Station (China) on foursquare. It says: "There is simply no way to buy a ticket at the machine unless you have a Chinese ID. What the hell they have English interface for then?" Apparently,the foreigner cannot buy ticket because he doesn’t have Chinese ID but there still presents an English interface for foreigners on the vending machine. Because of my profession, I find this awkward situation w...

   Software design,User experience,Importance     2012-03-26 14:42:50

  Does mobile application need architecture design?

Looking back to the history of PC software development a dozen years ago there was no  software architecture design, the consequence of this was that there would be a high cost on software maintainability and scalability. Later, people recognized the importance of software architecture and started to make the concept of software architecture mature. Now almost all software will have architecture design which has been the consensus of the software development companies and developers.Simi...

   Software design,Architecture design,Mobile app     2012-04-12 11:14:37

  Bill Gates : Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates admitted that Ctrl+Alt+Del command was a mistake when he was in a fund raising campaign at Harvard University last week. This command was initially designed to reboot the system. David Rubenstein, the Harvard fund raising campaign chairman, asked Bill Gates : "Why when I turn on my software or computer do I need to have my three fingers to press control,alt and delete? Whose idea was that?" The answer given by Bill Gates is : "Basically because when you turn your co...

   Bill Gates,Ctrl-Alt-Del,Mistake     2013-09-26 23:28:37

  Fear of Ignorance

This past week, I was interviewing a candidate for a VP role along with two of our engineering leads. Everyone in the room excluding myself was classically “technical” – they could write code, had experience solving hard software problems and a background in computer science. I wrote my last line of PHP in 2004, and it had to be rewritten by a real programmer within 6 months.During the interview, we had the following exchange (due to an imperfect memory, I’ll ...

   Leader,Team,Technical,Leadership,Ignorence     2011-11-21 10:03:03

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