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The cost of defects …
I am currently reading Laurent Bossavits’ fascinating book “The Leprechauns of Software Engineering”. He dissects one software engineering ‘myth’ after another: “Cone of Uncertainty”, “10x developer productivity” etc. What he is after is proof. Or at least some valid empirical data. And mostly he finds: not much at all. Sources cited often do not support…
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Switching proxy settings for Maven, git, etc. (on OS X)
I am currently working for two customers at three different locations (and at home). And the proxy settings differ at every location! Sometimes I have to switch from the internal network (with proxy) to my iPhone HotSpot and then back again. Each time I have to change my proxy settings for git Maven homebrew/curl/… I…
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Multithreading: Don’t do it!
It seems that I mostly get to write a blog entry when I have been to a conference. This year I went to Strange Loop. Impressive. It is organized by Alex Miller (you might know his hilarious Maven Adoption Curve) – mostly in his spare time! It still feels like a small conference, even though…
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Intellij IDEA: German keyboard Shortcuts Reference
Still trying to get used to Intellij IDEA. One of the major gripes I still have: keyboard shortcuts. Not only that they differ from what I am used to (how dare they). Quite often they are not working! I am using a MacBook Air with OS X Lion and many of the shortcuts used by…
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I like to write documentation
VICTOR: I like to write documentation. CHORUS: Hello, Victor! There it is. I have admitted it. Yes, like most programmers having suffered under heavy waterfall-like development processes, I still prefer running software over documentation. But whenever I get to work on a project with an existing code base, I really like to have some document…
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QCon highlights
A QCon presentation style review (mostly) At QCon this year the influence of Presentation Zen was to be seen everywhere. But I must admit: it didn’t help too much. Sure, the quality of the talks, its content was as great as ever, but I am not sure Garr Reynolds’s influence helped the presentations that much.…
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The idea that the business should learn IT is typical of technical people and completely misguided
Some time ago I wrote the following: “The idea that the business should learn IT is typical of technical people and completely misguided” (Ron Palmer) Yes, but then please don’t complain. Go away. You are talking about stuff you do not understand and I can’t take you seriously. There is a Dilbert cartoon where the…
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Cards on the Wall
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” (Woody Allen, probably) When it comes to creating project plans, I still use the “cards-on-the-wall” technique I first read about in 2001. This technique is rather old fashioned (compared to the current agile mainstream), but I still like it. The main dimensions I…
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REST vs. WS-* … Does it help me to achieve my goal?
The discussion about REST vs. SOAP seems to be endless, so — why bother? Because there seems to be a thorough misunderstanding between the two camps that needs to be resolved. A misunderstanding that pertains to different values hold by each camp. Perhaps “values” is to big a word and viewpoint might be enough, but…
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Shouts and Murmurs of a Software Architect
