Coding Philosophy

A collection of 107 posts

Coding Philosophy

The Programmer's Brain

Ultimately all problems are human problems and all humans have brains. Understanding how our brains work can be very useful.

Coding Philosophy

Generosity

By making your tool Open Source you are not losing out. You are actually gaining because you are allowing the community to contribute.

Coding Philosophy

Metrics

Metrics are always an interesting topic. What do you measure and why? And how do you keep people from gaming it?

Coding Philosophy

The Need For Speed

When making decisions you need a true north. You need a litmus test. Here is a case for why speed should be that litmus test.

Legacy Code , Coding Philosophy

Thoughts On Technical Debt

What does the phrase "technical debt" mean to you? How do you deal with it?

Coding Philosophy

Normalize Paying For Open Source Tools

If we want our favorite Open Source tools to continue to be maintained we need to start supporting the maintainers.

Coding Philosophy

The LabVIEW Experiment

You may have heard rumors that I started a podcast. "The LabVIEW Experiment" is a place to discuss how to improve our craft and make coding fun again.

Coding Philosophy

Be The Developer Everyone Wants On Their Team

How can you become the developer that everyone wants on their team? Here are a couple ideas.

Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

Thoughts On Rewrite Vs Refactor

Rewrite or Refactor? Every developer has faced that choice. What should you consider in making your decision?

Coding Philosophy

Maxims to Code By

Maxims are little phrases that we use to remind ourselves of what is important. Here are some that I use when writing code.

Coding Philosophy

Effective Time Management

As coders, we often like to work in large blocks of time, but that's not the only way. Here are some other techniques that can help.

Coding Philosophy

What does being a software architect mean?

I was recently asked: "What does being a software architect mean?" Here is my answer.

Coding Philosophy , Conferences

Improving the Human Experience

We don't write code for the compiler or the CPU. We write it for other human beings. Both user and developer experience are crucial.

Coding Philosophy

Tackling Problems From Both Ends

The best way of tackling a problem is often from both ends, ie top-down and bottom-up.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , DevOps

Thinking in Systems

This book is a recipe for social and organizational change. It is about predicting and influencing the complex systems we've built.

Coding Philosophy

The importance of common language

In order to see things, it is important to have words to describe them. Words are how our brains categorize and store knowledge.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , DevOps

The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project is a must-read book for anyone who works in technology. If you have ever worked in a larger company you will immediately identify with the situation described at the beginning of the book. You have an overworked IT department that seems disorganized and is always behind on

Coding Philosophy

Small Steps in Context

I've written before about breaking changes down into smaller chunks to make things more manageable, but we still have to take into account the context.

Coding Philosophy

The Arc of a Developer

In my recent interview for Legacy Code Rocks, I talked about the arc of a developer. I feel like there is this trajectory that people that go on over their careers. It's the learning and growth path that developers tend to follow.

Coding Philosophy

It's OK to Cringe

Cringing at your old code is actually a good thing. It implies that you've learned something. It is something to celebrate.

Interviews , Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

Legacy Code Rocks

I was recently interviewed by Scott and Andrea of Legacy Code Rocks. We had a really great conversation about software engineering and dealing with legacy code. We hit on some important topics. It is worth taking a listen.

Sam On Joel , Coding Philosophy

Painless Functional Specs Part 1

This Joel article came out after the Joel Test. One of the aspects of the Joel Test is having a spec. Apparently, Joel got some pushback on that so he launched into a series of articles on Painless Functional Specs. This is the first. A Product of It’s Time

Coding Philosophy

Do we really need more features?

Adding features adds complexity to our program. Is this new feature really worth it? We should be asking this question more often.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy

XP Explained

This book is considered a classic for a reason. It’s inspired a lot of coders over the years. I think the first time I had heard about it was from Stephen Loftus Mercer talking about pair programming. I’ve heard a lot about XP over the years since then

Software Engineering , Coding Philosophy

Premature Reuse

Premature Optimization Premature Optimization is a phrase that is often heard in software engineering. It’s where you envision some potential performance bottleneck, so as you are writing the code, you go out of your way to create the most optimum code (ie written in a way that the compiler