1

iPhone Tech Talk World Tour 2009, Hamburg

November 14, 2009

This Friday I attended the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour in Hamburg. Never having been to an Apple event before I carried some skepticism about the tech:hype ratio calibrated for the talks but in the end it was a rewarding day that proved long on information and short on hyperbole.

3

New Jobs, New Gods

October 19, 2009

Career leaderboards are misleading, indulgent, and hopelessly alluring. But if the details of individual professions are normalized away, strong trends become clearer, as in CNN’s Money Magazine survey of the Best Jobs in America 2009 where Software Developer holds the #12 position and numerous related careers cluster nearby.

2

Web Service API Design By Example

October 7, 2009

Developing for the web means, to a greater or lesser degree, being a productive citizen in a kingdom of online data exchange; and whether by formal design or organic, ad hoc growth, this means building an API.

1

9 Ways Developers Fail to Accommodate Business

September 15, 2009

We continually hear from developers how they’re crippled or oppressed by clueless business interests, but there are a lot of ways developers contribute to this environment, or impose their own prejudices onto a team. I’m taking a moment of self-reflection to list our profession’s inconspicuous shortcomings.

0

Website Disaster Katas

August 17, 2009

Code katas are summary exercises leading developers through the analysis and motions of solving hypothetical problems. For this set, I want to provoke the minor and greater disasters that web developers might face; katas which assume hostility and bring an unwelcome challenge. Because disasters (we hope) occur infrequently, it’s all the more valuable to confront them in the form of a kata so that when adversity strikes you can respond with practiced foresight.

7

Tripling Programmer Estimates

August 9, 2009

Conventional wisdom has it that when asked for an estimate, a programmer will recede into fitful contemplation, perhaps aided by private notes scribbled in parallel, only to produce a number that should dutifully be multiplied by three for the sake of reality. Nobody can say where this constant came from, or why it so often hits the mark. Excluding some kind of the anthropic principle, I can imagine an answer.

0

Testing: a Dependency Silhouette

August 3, 2009

Code is a restless, shadowy creature of our our making, into which our work is cast to be consumed by the darkness of time and intricacy. Testing is the angel-light which falls against its back and reminds us of its shape, how many limbs it has, and how it moves.