I’ve been a fan of Joel Spolsky for years, though I haven’t agreed with everything he’s written, and even mocked him a bit. Joel has written at length on his web site and in print about attracting the best developers, and one aspect of that has bothered me:
How do you attract top developers to work […]
Ben Collins-Sussman, one of the key developers behind Subversion, argues in Version Control and the 80% that distributed version control will remain a niche interest, and will not move in to the mainstream (as his favorite tool certainly has). He has a number of good reasons to back up this thesis.
I think he’s wrong. The […]
This is an oldie-but-goodie: Guy Steele’s “Growing a Language” talk from OOPSLA 1998.
It is amazing to me that Guy, whose is something of a legend in language design, and who thinks so clearly about what makes a good language, was also key in designing Java. Java has been extremely slow to grow in the sense […]
A recurring theme in our projects is a desire to “fix things so they stay fixed”. I have in mind writing about that idea in detail later, but for now I’ll start with an example of how to do so.
A common and useful thing to do with disk storage space is to keep old copies […]
A geographically distributed software development team (“distributed team”, for short) is simply one where developers don’t work in close physical proximity (within a few hundred feet). In such a time you interact mostly via electronic means.
To some readers a distributed team will sound like an obviously ridiculous idea, while to others it will sound quite […]
I recently read Tim Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Work Week, colloquially called 4HWW. The book is short, dense with ideas, and easily worth the $12 price. I recommend the book in spite of:
Questions about the veracity of Ferriss’s claimed accomplishments
Criticisms that some of his techniques are not as broadly applicable as he makes them […]
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