Freakonomics, Regulate This!

Some people create and innovate, some people follow the innovators, and some do everything they can to keep innovation down. This is a great episode of Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio: Regulate This! 

SSH User Annoyance & Solution

I’m in an environment where whenever I ssh to a machine I have a different username than that of my main machine. For example, the username on my desktop of “Some.Desktop.User,” whereas all the Linux environments I ssh to use the username “Some.Linux.User.” I’ve typed “ssh <host>” countless times, only to be annoyed when I…

From STUPID to SOLID Code

From STUPID to SOLID Code

William Durand: From STUPID to SOLID Code

No Rock Stars Either!

Speaking of the “Ninja Programmer” silliness, I stumbled about this ad today. Ug. If you’re company is looking for a “Rock Star Programmer,” you may be misunderstanding a great deal.

No Ninjas!

Many of us have seen them: The job posts claiming to be seeking a “Ninja Programmer.” I presume that these are companies that are: Looking for a well-versed candidate with diverse skills and the ability to tackle any project. A candidate that will find more value in the way he/she is perceived than salary. (Reading…

Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence Day! I’ll be celebrating by eating too much, watching fireworks, and staying up late to work on a new article for SDJ!

RedHat/Downtown Raleigh

RTP is cool and all, but, honestly, there’s lots of space around here, and we don’t all need to be driving the same direction.  I’d love to see more companies build in downtown Raleigh. Hopefully the RedHat move gives it a kick-start. NewsObserver: Red Hat workers bring energy to new downtown Raleigh headquarters

Computer Science Starting Salaries

According to this recent article (Canadian HR Reporter), the high starting salaries are still in fields related to software and other fields of engineering. The careers with the highest starting salaries for graduates with a bachelor’s degree in the United States are software engineering ($71,666) (all numbers US$), industrial engineering ($62,245), chemical engineering ($57,500), electrical/electronic…

SDJ Article

It is a thrill and an honor to have an article published in a journal, especially Software Developer’s Journal. This is the second time I have had such an honor. My article, Do Not Flounder, appears in the June, 2013 issue. “Do not flounder!” by Matthew Rupert will surely leave all software engineers entertained and…

The GOTO Guy

I recently started a new position with a new employer, and in so doing I went from being the token goto guy for everything software development related to working with several of the best software engineers I have ever worked with. At first this can seem intimidating, and there is certainly a degree of comfort…

Unit Test Overconfidence

I wrote before about unit tests and one benefit being increased developer confidence. On the flip-side of this, unit tests can lead to developer overconfidence. There is no perfect replacement for thorough integration tests in a realistic environment. Most of us (developers) at some point have probably scratched our heads and said, “well the unit…

The Evolution of the Computer Science Degree – Input Output

The Evolution of the Computer Science Degree – Input Output.

Coding Horror: Procrastination and the Bikeshed Effect

I heard the term “Bikeshed Conversation” the other day and had to Google it… Coding Horror: Procrastination and the Bikeshed Effect.

Scala in 2012

JavaWorld.com: Scala for 2012? Deciding Whether to Invest In a Programming Language

The Clean Coder

I’m reading a book right now titled The Clean Coder. Here’s a quote from chapter 1: Your career is your responsibility. It is not your employer’s responsibility to make sure you are marketable. It is not your employer’s responsibility to train you, or to send you to conferences, or to buy you books. These things…

Initializing Persisted Collections (JPA/Hibernate)

Here’s a good question/answer that I came across today over at Stackoverflow. The answer is that it NOT a good idea to set a collection inside of a getter or setter method because: I would strongly discourage lazy initialization for properties in an ORM entity. We had a serious issue when doing lazy initialization of…

Trello

A friend was showing me Trello. Looks really cool.

Wikibook: CI for Software Medical Devices

I’ve started a Wikibook, and I welcome any contributors: CI for Software Medical Devices. [Wikibooks]

Ruby and DICOM

I am pleased to see that people are already working on Ruby Gems for DICOM. Makes me want to make a simple DICOM viewer (in all of my “spare time”). [Ruby DICOM] [RubyForge]

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 8

Build Script Creation Ant should automatically determine which files will be affected by the next build. Programmers should not have to figure this out manually. While we will use an IDE for most development, we must not rely on the build scripts that are generated by the IDE. There are a few reasons for this:…

What is a Software Medical Device?

When writing software for medical purposes, that software may or may not be subject to FDA scrutiny. We may or may not be required to submit for a 510k. What does this mean? How do we know? Its all a little confusing. As I considered a series of articles on the subject, I wanted to…

EHRs on iPad

A brief article over at Medical Electronics Design Magazine points out that doctors, while they are loving iPads, have yet to fully embrace them for use with electronic health record systems. It seems simple enough, given the fact that many EHRs are now web-based, or at least have some sort of web-based UI. The article…

Why Turn Your .JAR Into a .EXE?

I’ve worked in a few environments where IT/IS maintains very strict control over what software is installed on employee computers. As a developer this can be a real annoyance, especially when people from the IT/IS department question the needs of software developers to install, update, remove and re-install software on their computers. I understand that…

Big cable-backed broadband bill soars through NC House, one step closer to stifling ISP competition — Engadget

Big cable-backed broadband bill soars through NC House, one step closer to stifling ISP competition — Engadget.

.NET on a Resume a Libability?

The CEO of Expensify wrote a post on the company’s blog about why he considers .NET experience on a resume to be a general liability. Wow. I can’t say that I agree, but there are some interesting points. I have been known to think of Windows developers as somehow having less experience, but this is…

Good Recruiting

Last night I finally made it to a Ruby Hack Night in Raleigh… And it was good. Being a “techie” the single MOST important thing we can do for our career is to stay relevant (and any techie who does this because he/she likes it should never have a problem in this department). The folks…

Redmine on Oracle

I posted this issue to the Redmine group. It seems that Redmine doesn’t play nice with Oracle without some enhancements. This one relates to the nasty 30-character limit on Oracle table names. I’m anxious to see if they pick it up. I also added #7826. [Redmine – Issue #7825] [Redmine – Issue #7826]

Riding Rails: DoS Vulnerability in Ruby

Riding Rails: DoS Vulnerability in Ruby.

Note to Self

This helped me…

Open Source Support

Will we ever be past the point where management, in an almost predictable manner, rejects open source solutions on the basis of “lacking support?” Just the other day a friend of mine spend a good portion of his day troubleshooting an open source package with, get this, THE DEVELOPER who wrote the code! I cannot…