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2004.02.27 by Karel Thönissen A software engineer's office In the literature one can find excellent references to research about the best working environment for programmers. See the bionic office for an office designed with programming specifically in mind. Unfortunately, offices like these are often beyond the horizon for smaller start-ups. At Garabit we have a small team of developers who work in the same office. Although we do not have private offices, we have paid considerable attention to working conditions. Our experience indicates that a reasonably good office for software development does not have to be very expensive.
[complete article] More and more applications are trying to be smart and fail miserably. Either put the user in charge and do not interfere in his interactions, or be really intelligent, read the user's mind, and be 100% correct.
[complete article] Tegenwoordig is het heel eenvoudig iemand te adviseren de juiste PC aan te schaffen. Het Internet is de grote gelijkmaker. Platformkeuzes van tien jaar geleden bestaan nauwelijks nog. Daarnaast dalen de prijzen zo hard dat het loont om meerder machines te hebben die gespecialiseerd in specifieke taken.
[complete article] Who should design the user interface for your next application or website? A programmer? A graphic designer? A master of arts proficient in writing English? The psychologist or specialist in human factors? [...] Programmers should provide their input from the technical angle. However, user interface design is not their field of expertise. Let programmers design your user interface and you might end up with something that is graphically ugly, uses a language that only bares a resemblance to English, requires the user to twist his mind, but that is a showcase of technological wit. You also need the latest version of your OS, various toolkits and database installed. Unfortunately, nobody is interested in that. The application is used because a job needs to be done.
[complete article] This article explains how interns can write a report that meets the requirements as formulated by their institutions and that is not at odds with XP-practices. (Dutch)
[complete article] It is a problem for all non-native speakers, and many of the native speakers too: how to spell words correctly without mixing up British English or American English? If you are either American or English this is less of a problem, because you probably have been submerged in a language with consistent spelling your entire life. However, for foreigners this is almost impossible without a dictionary, even when they speak English excellently. Still the question remains whether to use British or American English.
[complete article] Most people are convinced of the importance of good archiving, but we seem to have forgotten to valuable lessons from our paper past now that we have entered the digital era. Paper has its own problems, its is bulky and tends to deteriorate rapidly over time, but digital bits have even more problems. Digital bits deteriorate even more rapidly. Sure, digital information does not require much shelf space and it is possible to keep the digital information of a document vital for eternity with some minor effort, but here the good news ends.
[complete article] Suppose that you are living in Amsterdam, you have sinned and you must make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. However, you are also an IT-professional and you want to make this journey rather quickly, before your IT-skills have become worthless (developments are quick after all). How would you plan this pilgrimage? Do you plan or do?
[complete article] They live together in the same institution, the archivist and the publisher. Maintaining a historic archive and a content management system is too expensive, because all material then must be selected, filtered, classified, etc. twice. So from management there will be a strong push towards a single system. Who will win this battle? The archivist with his historically precise system based on format, or the publisher with his content management system based on the more malleable text?
[complete article] At Garabit, the use of debuggers already was minimal. Our developers estimate that our quality assurance framework reduced their time spent in debuggers with 75% compared to earlier programming jobs they did. I estimate that I spent less than 10 minutes in the debugger per month. However, I always had some trouble convincing others to stamp out their last use of debuggers completely. From now on this will be simple: conventional debugging is a completely waste of time, talent, energy and coffee. This is obvious for anyone who has seen our improved QA system work. With our new framework in place, we have a mechanism that not only discovers errors in source code very early without having to trace or watch the anything, it also allows us to determine the location of the error exactly to the statement level in a split second. It is almost to good to be true. Loosely speaking, we have refuted the Heisenberg-principle of software engineering, knowing both the timing/presence and the location of an error.
[complete article] This article explains extreme programming using two different metaphores: bridge construction and militairy logistics. (Dutch)
[complete article] Toen minister halverwege de jaren 90 besloot om het Nederlands te fixeren op een verplichte spelling die noch intern konsistent, noch historisch korrekt was, heb ik besloten de spellingsregels voortaan te laten voor wat ze zijn. Ik ben elke dag van de week bereid om alle regels te veranderen, mits daar goede argumenten voor gevonden kunnen worden. Maar enige vorm van logika ontbrak, het geheel is nu byzantijns. Mijn regels zijn eenvoudig en konsekwent.
[complete article] Ask 10 programmers about their favorite tool for writing quality software, and 9 will mention a debugger. However, I have a disturbing message for them: debuggers actually decrease the quality of the code.
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