Category Archives: Software Engineering

The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition

I’ve had a Kindle DX for about 3 or 4 years now. In fact I’ve had two, I broke the first one by dropping it from a bench top. And I’ve been very happy with it. But it’s funny that … Continue reading

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Practical Software Project Estimation (3rd Ed)

My current focus is to develop an estimation tool. Not just for software, but for a wide range of industries. Software estimation is, of course, closest to my heart, given that my line of work is software. This is where … Continue reading

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Waltzing with Bears

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister are probably best known for the book Peopleware (unreviewed). It’s a justly famous book in my industry, containing as it does generous lashings of both wit and wisdom. Sadly, it is a book more honoured … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Software Engineering, Systems | 2 Comments

A not-so-brief aside on reigning in chaos

Everything that humans touch eventually becomes complex, whether we like it or not. (Blog posts too. This one started out as a comparison of three competing software system alternatives and subsequently bloated into a discussion of chaos in computer systems.) … Continue reading

Posted in Robojar, Software Engineering, Systems, Technical Notes | 26 Comments

Does Leadership Matter?

Below is an essay I wrote for a software engineering course taught by Professor Terry Woodings. It’s already dated, in the sense that since I wrote it, Steve Jobs has died. I’ve mentioned it a few times on forums such … Continue reading

Posted in Life, Software Engineering, Studies | 2 Comments

Cooking and Coding

Sometimes, when we programmers sit down to explain programming, we resort to the hoary old cooking metaphor. “Programming is like cooking”, we say. “We write recipes, and the computer carries them out”. And sometimes methodologists apply it to our work … Continue reading

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Agile plans

One of the books I have going at the moment (I tend to multi-task books) is Mike Cohn’s Agile Estimating and Planning, a fairly concise take on how to obtain these qualities from agile projects. I think that the central … Continue reading

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