General Commentary – Page 11 – Software and Other Shenanigans

If “it’s not that important” why are we even bothering at all?

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Feb 192014

Have you ever been working on something, and had a thought how something should be done, started to talk it out with somebody, only have the phrase “it’s not that important” get used? If it’s not important enough to think about doing well, why are we thinking about doing it at all then?

What’s your expertise?

General Commentary, Work 1 Response »

Dec 312013

Work anywhere long enough, and you’re going to become the <something> person. From that point on, all questions, advice, etc. on that topic by default go to you. In my experience, this isn’t usually the result of some deliberate action to make a person the <something> “expert”, it’s the result of the work they get assigned and end up doing. The bigger questions are, what are your areas of expertise, what would you like your areas of expertise to be, and what are you doing to make the 2 previous answers line up?

This is why nobody likes you

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Dec 122013

I hardly do anything in Windows anymore. My work machine is Ubuntu, and my personal machine is a Mac. The only Windows computer I ever really use is an old machine at my church. However, that doesn’t protect me from having to deal with files made in Windows. And those things are starting to become the bane of my existence. Continue reading »

I screwed up, you shouldn’t too.

General Commentary, Programming, Work 2 Responses »

Nov 012013

1 of the things I work on regularly was originally created with a fairly consistent data set. We had a very good idea of what fields were going to be in the data. As a result, we thought we knew where exactly we needed to check for null data, and when we didn’t need to know. Then the data set expanded, and the new data wasn’t nearly as consistent as what we started with. That’s when we realized that we were very much wrong in thinking we knew what needed null checks. Continue reading »

What happens when dogfooding isn’t an option?

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Oct 182013

Dogfooding is an important part of software development. Google “dogfooding blog post” and you’ll have reading material for weeks. But what do you do when it’s tough to dogfood your own product? What do you do when dogfooding your own product isn’t even a viable possibility? Continue reading »

People shouldn’t have to “hunt logic”

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Oct 012013

I’ll admit to being guilty of making this joke. You know, somebody questions why things work or function a certain way, and then there’s that snarky little line, “you’re hunting logic”. It seems hilarious, until you realize just what you’re pointing out. Namely, “Yes, this is stupid, and yes this doesn’t make any sort of discernible sense, but we’re going to keep doing it anyways.” Not so funny now is it? Being told that “you’re hunting logic” is basically an admission that you’re right, but that nobody wants to take on the hordes of people who put things into this situation. Continue reading »

Wedding planning tips from a software developer (part I)

General Commentary, Shenanigans 1 Response »

Jul 312013

Having just gotten married recently, I tried a lot of stuff to help make the planning process easier, and had a few thoughts on things that did (and didn’t quite) work that I wanted to share. The first thing I wanted to mention were thoughts about planning and organization. As it turns out, wedding planning isn’t just a 1-person process, and so some degree of organization and coordination winds up being needed. Continue reading »

You’re always going to need it

General Commentary, Programming 1 Response »

Jul 192013

One thing I’ve noticed the more I work on anything is that reusability is everything. Even if you’re slapping together some simple little script that is intended for 1 specific thing to do some piddly little task, odds are you’re going to need to dig it back out and adapt or convert it for something else. In short, you’re always going to need it. So what does this mean to you as you write any sort of code? Continue reading »

Delete or get off the pot

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Jun 192013

I have to be honest, I’ve never understood part of “soft” deletes that makes it a good idea. You know the basic gist, labeling an action “delete”, and removing it from display, but behind the scenes all you’re really doing is flipping a bit somewhere to tell your application to never show this thing again, as opposed to actually removing it. I suppose it makes sense for when you absolutely, positively, need to retain data (auditing purposes, court orders, etc.), but as far as a general practices go, “delete” should mean “delete”, not “please just don’t show it to me again”. Continue reading »

These things shouldn’t be happening

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Jun 012013

For everything we’ve learned about how to make good software, there’s still some pretty glaring failures out in the world that aren’t so much technical failures as they are somebody either choosing to make a bad feature that they should know better than to do, or just not fixing something that people should have realized was a bad idea and fixed long ago. Regardless, here’s a list of things that should be left to die out in the name of making the planet a better place to live. Continue reading »

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