Tag: projects

You Can’t Use The Corner Of Your Desk For Awesome And Successful Projects

Published 2020/10/23

You Can’t Use The Corner Of Your Desk For Awesome And Successful Projects

Before reading any further, stop, scoot your chair back, and take a look around. What does your reading environment look like? Where are you right now? Are you at work taking a few minutes to browse the web? Are you outside catching up on some news and reading while enjoying the fresh air? Have you been sitting too long in the bathroom while glued to your phone? Twenty years ago, if you were reading a blog then most likely you would have been tied to a desk somewhere, looking at a big and bulky CRT monitor with an actual trackball inside your mouse. Now, chances are, you are sitting there swiping with a finger on a 6 inch screen with more resolution than that massive CRT monitor had those 20 years ago. Yet even with the change in technology and habits over the past two decades, the concept of a…

The Dangers Of Falling In Love During Software Development

Published 2020/02/11

The Dangers Of Falling In Love During Software Development

Spring is in the air! The birds are singing, the first flowers are starting to bloom and yet any good Software Engineer worth their salt is definitely not outside enjoying it. Their world has drawn down to a harshly lit fluorescent cubicle where the rapid clacking away at the keyboard is only interrupted by the guttural cries emitted every time a unit test fails. A singular goal exists in this state: to birth their software progeny upon the world. Yet, this act of creation is not borne out of a sense of duty or fulfillment. A deeper, more intimate connection has been established between this specific developer with this specific project. Yes, like the perils and pitfalls of that soft and squishy feeling that humans get upon first achieving romantic feelings for another of our species, Engineers also have the capacity to fall deeply in love with a software project.…

Published 2019/10/20

First Resumes

Co-Ops, interns, fresh-from-bootcamp developers lend me your keyboards…. I have been very fortunate in being able to build a co-op program in conjunction with the engineering program at a local university. Both in targeting hiring entry level developers and during the time that this program has been running I have had the great (mis)fortune to read hundreds of entry-level resumes. Through the reading of so many resumes I would like to give some direct feedback to new and entry level people. First of all try and remember this: resumes suck. There is no getting around it. This will be a common theme from me on this blog. The main reason I don’t like resumes is very simple. How old are you while reading this? You may be in your early 20s. Let’s say that today is your birthday and that you are turning 20. You have now lived 7,300 days…

Published 2019/09/27

It’s Project Time!! #Project-WPC

Let’s get this ball rolling. I want to start learning something new, so it is time to create my first project! For some reason when I started thinking about this post this morning the old school Batman TV show (WPC Score: 24) theme song popped into my head. So just because I can, here are the lyrics: Batman, Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman!Batman, Batman, Batman!Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, naBatman! source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/batmanlyrics.html I would love to know that this has now caused the hopefully dozens of people that might read this to get that tune stuck in their heads… but let’s be realistic here. I am getting old and the population of people that might get this reference is shrinking. *sigh* Oh well – let’s get to the project. This will be the first project…