I recently finished an interesting book called Tribal Leadership. The book is full of insights about how people behave in groups and what it takes to lead them.
Software guys have great sayings. This may be surprising to some since we don’t usually associate mastery of the spoken word with geekdom. Nonetheless, there are some gems out there and I’ve compiled a short list of my favorites. Enjoy! “You can only have one baby in nine months no matter how many women you […]
Software development is a team sport (Yes, I realize that lone wolf coders can accomplish amazing things, but that just doesn’t scale well). To succeed in a team sport, you need a good team. To understand how to build a good team, you may need to look to other team sports for guidance. Sports like basketball. In basketball, successful teams […]
There are many qualities that make a good engineer. This post is not about those. Instead, it’s about qualities that make me cringe and run away.
I really like Safari Books Online. As one colleague put it, it’s “the gift of unlimited knowledge“. For those who aren’t familiar, Safari is an online subscription-based book service. You pay a monthly fee to get access to a boat load of technology, business, finance, and other books. These books are only available in electronic […]
Software development is a craft and those who practice it are craftsmen. As with any craft, this one demands a set of skills from its practitioners: Be Good With Your Hands To code, you must type. To code well, you must type fast. Although this sounds weird, it’s quite important. Fred Brooks once said that software […]
I’ve put together a short list of books any software developer would greatly benefit from. Enjoy! Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Robert Martin Maintainability is arguably the most important aspect of good software. If you don’t understand why that is, please read this book. From naming conventions to OO principles, “Uncle Bob” Martin covers […]
There are two challenges in building software: building the right thing and building the thing right (yes, I love alliteration). Build the Right Thing Building software that users want is hard because most people don’t know what they want. You may be surprised to find that people don’t know what they want, but it’s true. […]