The Impact of Technical Ignorance
I knew a Chief Software Architect from a major financial organization who was an anomaly: he had never developed software professionally. His undergraduate degree is in Accounting and Finance, and…
Return To Office Insanity
March 2020. We anxiously watched COVID spread, first through Asia and then Europe before it really impacted the United States. Second week in March retail businesses started closing and office…
Ignoring Kotlin’s Null Safety
So hands up: whom among us has ever written code that threw a NullPointerException? And those with your hands down: you are either lying or have never written software! [And,…
Corporate Culture Run Amok
This Digg article The Most Egregious Reasons People Quit Their Jobs On The Spot reminded me of the I quite a job without giving notice, without looking back, without being…
Pull Requests and Tech Debt
https://www.flickr.com/photos/17963290@N00/6520777613 I recently created a small DSL that provided state-based object validation, which I required for implementing a new feature. Multiple engineers were impressed with its general usefulness and wanted…
Windows IRL #2
From a Citibank branch near Union Square in New York City. Just another example showing that Windows insisting on being conspicuous....
Non-Functional Testing
Functional testing is fairly straight-forward and easy-to-understand: does your software behave as designed, or, perhaps, as your users expect? Examples of functional testing could be: Are the items selected correctly…
Apple Being Apple
I recently bought a Mac Mini M2 to replace my 3-year old Mac Mini M1. As to be expected, Apple's packaging is a work-of-art, totally unnecessary yet impressive and subtle.…
Windows IRL #1
As a technologist, I'm always interested in learning about the underlying technologies. Once, I intently watched an airplane's entertainment system go through a Linux reboot. I recently added new use…
Me, A Conference Speaker? Yes, you!
I have been in your shoes: it is very intimidating to get in front of strangers and speak about your passion: technical topics where others are stronger; opinions that are…