Category: Software Development

A New Hope

Star Wars Opening Crawl

The plot focuses on the Rebel Alliance, led by Princess Leia, and its attempt to destroy the Galactic Empire’s space station, the Death Star.

I just try to listen to the smart guys: http://buytaert.net/selecting-a-client-side-framework-for-drupal

I’m totally stoked on Drupal with Angular on the client side. NodeJS for Real time comms: https://drupalize.me/videos/what-nodejs?p=2348

Recognizing a riptide

There is so much advancement of technology, I can’t keep up at the moment.  Chrome, FireFox, Drupal, WordPress, Video, Live Streaming, Angular vs React, SSL, HTTP/2.  Upgrades to the tooling I’ve built have been put off so long, that now they are beginning to be incompatible.

I can see, now, that I’ve been swimming in an ocean of sorts.  There is a strong current of technical change and technical debt, that is pulling me out to sea.

A Riptide!!!!

Now I knew the answer:  Swim parallel to shore to get out of the current, then swim back to shore.

Sideways for a while, it is.

Happy Easter

Some interesting reading time today, it’s Easter and drizzled rain for most of the day, so I layed around with the laptop

http://nats.io/
https://golang.org/
https://github.com/repejota/phpnats

I put that one in the idea hopper. SubPub Messaging; scales to 10+M, yow

I read about Simon Greenleaf

While teaching law at Harvard, Professor Greenleaf stated to his class that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was simply a legend; as an atheist he thought miracles to be impossible. In a rebuttal, three of his law students challenged him to apply his acclaimed rules of evidence to the resurrection account.

After much prodding, Greenleaf accepted his students’ challenge and began an investigation into the evidence. Focusing his brilliant legal mind on the facts of history, Greenleaf attempted to prove the resurrection account was false.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/greenleaf.html

Greenleaf was so persuaded by the evidence that he became a committed Christian. He believed that any unbiased person who honestly examines the evidence will conclude what he did—that Jesus Christ has truly risen.

Note 10-1-2017: A reader asked that I research whether or not Greenleaf was already a Christian (Episcopalian) when he wrote this, and I took the challenge.

The story of the challenge by his students can’t be proven and that he was an atheist can’t be proven, nor dis-proven.  I could not find positive proof that he was or was not an Episcopalian, nor active in the Massachusetts Bible Society.

This doesn’t detract from the findings.   Jesus was born a man, crucified, and resurrected.

I can add that one to may existing faith:
John 21:24 This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

The Death of Agile

The death of agile?

  • The skills and talents of individual programmers are the main determinant of software quality. No amount of management, methodology, or high-level architecture astronautism can compensate for a poor quality team.
  • The motivation and empowerment of programmers has a direct and strong relationship to the quality of  the software.
  • Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver.
  • The consequences of poor design decisions multiply rapidly.
  • It will usually take multiple attempts to arrive at a viable design.
  • You  should make it easy to throw away code and start again.
  • Latency kills. Short feedback loops to measurable outcomes create good software.
  • Estimates are guess-timates; they are mostly useless. There is a geometric relationship between the length of an estimate and its inaccuracy.
  • Software does not scale. Software teams do not scale. Architecture should be as much about enabling small teams to work on small components as the technical requirements of the software.
    Coconut Headphones: Why Agile Has Failed

The Rest of the Story