Software Engineering is often regarded as an oxymoron by those of us with any experience in this industry. Craft? Sure. But Engineering? Not! Read more »

This started as an offshoot of a previous thread on Why OSGI Will Never Be Popular but then it got me thinking... Read more »

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

Seth Godwin normally poses as a marketing guru, which makes this video an odd duck for the software developer. 

If you want the abridged version: "Ignore all the normal excuses. Set a date, and ship your software. The world needs it."

You may or may not agree with the conclusion, but he does a great job of busting through the noise and identifying how a culture of excuses and passive aggressive players can keep a development organization from succeeding. Read more »

Summary:

Making simplicity complex, for fun and profit: Roger Sessions makes his next move.

You might think you're reading the Drudge Report on software, with MIT grad students doing the numerical analysis. It's a superb job of mixing fear-mongering with obnosis and fancy formulas. Pages later, you'll come to the conclusion that things are too complex, and that you can hire Roger Sessions to show you how to make things simple. Read more »

Sharp Programmers Like To Kick Butt

When you are working around sharp programmers, one of the biggest challenges can be staying out of their way.

What is even more counter-intuitive is that staying out of their way can mean challenging them to the maximum, and seeing to it that they stay challenged on a consistent basis.

Never realized until this week, how much harder that makes a manager's job. Read more »