What’s The Value of College?

Not long ago I found myself working alongside a brilliant college dropout–A young junior programmer who was just plain gifted when it came to software development. I was very surprised that he hadn’t completed a degree of any kind. It made me wonder why I had, without much consideration, put such high value on a…

Coding Horror/The Software Career

I don’t like to just post links to another blog or article. Anyone can do that, and there are far too many blogs out there that create no original content. So I try to write original thoughts and articles. That said, sometimes this is a rule worth breaking. Jeff Atwood has a great post over…

Mistakes

The other day my daughter wanted to heat up some soup in the microwave. She insisted on doing it herself. The lid of the Campbell’s Soup can the type with a tab that can be opened without a can opener. She stood in front of her mother as she attempted to open the can, wrestling…

Do Not Flounder (Stay Un-bored)

The following is an article that I am working on for a yet-to-be-determined publication. Having done this before, I will say that getting an article published in a journal/magazine isn’t as difficult as one may think (as long as you have something to say). This hasn’t been proofed, so please forgive any typos or errors.…

Java “Losing its Mojo?” I Think Not!

Wired has an article titled Is Java Losing Its Mojo? While the article seems to contradict itself in some ways, I have to take issue with the general theme. As someone who pays attention, I simply haven’t seen this happening. On the contrary–It seems to me that Java continues to grow. Just peruse the job…

Success as a Technical Lead – Article

I stumbled upon this article today. Its a little dated (from 2008), but still relevant. I don’t think the list is comprehensive, and I certainly think other technical leads would have varying opinions on things. All of the points listed are good, but there are a some points that really stand out: 6. Be part…

Version Control/Wiki Control

I FIRMLY believe that documents related to a project should be managed in the same version repository as the source code. This gives us a snapshot in time of all items related to a project. The problem with this comes when using a wiki (and I love using wikis, so don’t get me wrong). There…

6 Developers, One Room

Under an extremely tight deadline one team member decided that it would be best if the developers took over a conference room. On a long conference room table there are 6 computers, and 6 extremely talented developers chat, joke, brainstorm and work away. The manager of the team is there too, explaining requirements and helping…

Staying Current

During nearly ever job interview I’ve ever had, on the phone or face-to-face, I’ve been asked some form of the question, “How do you keep your experience current?” Sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) this is asked by someone who seems impressed that I have such knowledge on a fair amount of “new stuff.” More often this…

The care and feeding of software engineers – Link

I really like and agree with this article:

http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feeding-of-software-engineers-or-why-engineers-are-grumpy/

Appropriate Checkin Comments

I read this post today with a list of funny checkin comments today. Some of them are funny simply because of the lacking description. Here are some comments I’ve seen in my personal experience: many small changes Microsoft IE sucks! cleanup oops fix the bug Worse, I’ve seen entirely empty changeset comments. The above lists,…

What Every *GOOD* Developer Should Know: Quality Assurance

I’m currently reading “The Clean Coder,” and Robert Martin puts emphasis on the importance of software engineers incorporating QA practices into their regular work much better than I can. Here are a few quotes of his on the subject: “Software is too complex to create without bugs. Unfortunately that doesn’t let you off the hook.…

What Every *Good* Developer Should Know

I came across this guy’s blog post titled “10 Things Every Good Web Developer Should Know.” The post is geared toward web developers, but it did get me thinking a bit about the more general questions. I’ve noticed shortcomings among developers (myself included) for a many years. What are some of the things that all…

Best Software Developers

From Kawseq Consulting: An average developer can produce software 10 times as fast as the worst developers. The best software developers can produce software 10 times as fast as average developers. That means the best software developers can produce software as much as 100 times as fast as the worst developers. 1. Hiring cheaper developers…

Test-Parallel Development

Here’s a post (albeit dated) where a developer lists a few problems with test driven development. There are plenty more where that came from. What I’ve found works better is a hybrid approach, where we write tests at the same time as code (or just after). The idea behind pure TDD is one of those…

Is the Software Medical Device World Ready for Agile?

To begin with, I don’t see any real reason why software medical device manufacturers should fear Agile. I do, however, see some stipulations that need to be made. Here is a rather dated article on the subject (from 2007) : Agile Development in an FDA Regulated Setting. The author of the blog post concludes: It…

Is there ever a reason NOT to use an Artificial Primary Key?

I found this post on the subject of choosing a primary key. While Java Persistence Annotations allow us to use any field we want as a primary key (as long as it is naturally unique), is there a good reason to use anything that is not a surrogate/artificial primary key? There are plenty of fine…

Valuable Unit Tests in a Software Medical Device, Part 9

I thought I was done, but here is yet another good reason to incorporate complex function automated testing: Validation of multiple Java runtime environments. Fabrizio Giudici proposes this as a solution for testing with Java 7, but we can always take it a step further, verifying multiple OS environments as well. Of course, this requires…

Brain Rules: Why a Daily Standup Should Be in the Afternoon

I’m reading a book right now called Brain Rules. In it, the author discusses how after a number of hours sitting in front of a computer our brains literally start to call it quits for the day. This happens long before our typical 8 hour workday is up. If your job involves something that requires…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 9

Using a CI Environment to Replace the Traditional DHF Naturally, an important part of continuous integration is having a CI build that can be checked regularly for continued build success. This is probably what is commonly though of as the key benefit, but there is much more to be gained. Any continuous integration environment that…

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:…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 7

Build Labelling A build is labeled with a predetermined version number (e.g., “2.0”) and with a Subversion changeset number. The beauty of this is that we have a build that is associated with a particular changeset and, by association, an entire set of project documents and sources (as long as we put everything in a…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 6

Build Scheduling Jenkins-CI allows teams to set up a project so that a build is performed whenever a change is committed through a version control system. The “Poll Version Control System” option is selected to do this. From there, the team must set up a schedule so that Jenkins will know how often to poll…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 5

What I am proposing in this article is something that I, personally, have never done. In my positions as a software lead, architect, developer and software quality analyst, I have worked only with a DHF as a particular folder with specific subsets of documentation within. This approach has always resulted in a documentation nightmare. I’ve…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 4

21 CFR Part 820 – DHF Requirements 820.30(e) Design History File (DHF) means a compilation of records which describes the design history of a finished device. –Device Advice: Regulation and Guidance, Software Validation Guidelines, http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance Medical device software is audited and controlled by standards defined by FDA, specifically 21 CFR parts 11 and 820. Many…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 3

Jenkins CI For the purposes of this article, the focus will be on one specific continuous integration build tool, Jenkins CI. This is one of the more popular (open source) tools available. Jenkins CI (the continuation of a product formerly called Hudson) allows continuous integration builds in the following ways: 1.    It integrates with popular…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 2

Continuous Integration refers to both the continuous compiling and building of a project tree and the continuous testing, releasing and quality control. This means that throughout the project, at every stage, the development team will have a build available with at least partial documentation and testing included. The CI Build is used to perform certain…

Continuous Integration on Software Medical Device Projects, Part 1

I’m currently working on an article about continuous integration on software medical device projects, and how the CI environment can actually be used to solve many of the design and tracing requirements that must be dealt with on such a project. I’m not finished, but I wanted to post a little bit here. Here goes.…

Valuable Unit Tests in a Software Medical Device, Part 8

The Traceability Matrix A critical factor in making unit tests usable in an auditable manner is incorporating them into the traceability matrix. As with any test, requirements, design elements and hazards must be traced to one another through use of the traceability matrix. The project team must document traceability of requirements through specification and testing…

Valuable Unit Tests in a Software Medical Device, Part 7

Regulated Environment Needs Per 21 CFR Part 820 (Subpart C—Design Controls): (f) Design verification. Each manufacturer shall establish and maintain procedures for verifying the device design. Design verification shall confirm that the design output meets the design input requirements. The results of the design verification, including identification of the design, method(s), the date, and the…