Are You Actually A Post-Agilist?
Have you heard that term? I happened upon it purely by accident about a year ago and after reading and learning a bit about it I found that I could identify with it quite a bit. You can read Jason Gorman’s post Post-Agilism Explained (Pretentiously) as well as Jonathan Kohl’s massive post - Post-Agilism Frequently Asked Questions for a great discussion of what the post-Agile movement is all about. Jonathan and Jason independently coined the term at about the same time so they are an authority on the term if anyone is. I am going to attempt to give my humble views on the topic and hopefully you will identify with some of what I say.
For those of you who’ve decided to learn about post-Agilism after they finish reading this post (thanks!), post-Agilism is basically a movement in the software development community of people who see themselves as moving beyond Agile methods. They have used Agile and not-so-agile methodologies and have moved beyond both to using an amalgamation of tools and methods that best facilitate them doing their job. Post-Agilism is not about evangelizing a particular process or a set of practices or even the Agile Manifesto, it is about getting to the core of the issues that process in general tries to address and solving them in the best ways possible. At least, this is the way I see it.
How NOT To Run A Social Community - Subject Digg
Photo by luisar
When I first started my blog a few months ago, I leaned very quickly (as I am sure many people have before me) that social media was a great way to give a new blog some much needed exposure. Digg, being the undisputed social media leader (at least as far as traffic is concerned), was therefore the natural choice for me to get involved in. It was perhaps a selfish reason to join the community, but that was how I got my first taste of social media.
How To Save Money As A Student
My university days are not that far behind me, so before I grow fat off my software developer’s salary (fat chance! – pun intended) and forget what it was like, I though I’d write down some eminently practical advice on how to be more money conscious as a student.
None of this is going to be mind blowing stuff, I am not going to tell you how to make millions so you don’t have to worry about money. Oh alright I will, all you need to do is write the next big social media application and “wham bam thank you ma’am” you’re on easy street. For those of us back on Earth however, I’ll just try to give some tips on how you can hopefully save money and go from being perpetually out of cash to being perpetually low on it (let’s face it there is no tip I can give that will make you perpetually loaded with cash as a student, unless that social media thing works out for you). I am also going to try and make these tips fun unlike some other articles such as this one or this one, which are great but less fun.
Are You Using The Full Power Of Spring When Injecting Your Dependencies?
If you’re a serious Java (or possibly even .NET) developer you’ve most likely used the Spring Framework before for all you dependency injection needs. You therefore probably know that there are 2 common ways to inject dependencies into your spring beans:
- setter injection
- constructor injection
But, did you know that there is a lot more to it than that? Spring has some extremely powerful capabilities that allow you to do a lot more than just call constructors and setters when creating Spring beans and injecting dependencies.
I am going to attempt to show you some ways that will allow you to create spring beans and inject dependencies in all sorts of different ways, which should let you get a lot more out of using Spring. If you’re a Spring guru then you probably won’t get anything new out of this, however everyone else should hopefully learn something new and become a much more versatile Spring developer.
Here Are Some Words That Rhyme With Orange!
You thought that it was impossible right? Everybody knows that there aren’t any words in the English language that rhyme with orange. Well, everybody is wrong! Here is a whole list full of words that rhyme with orange perfectly. I also included the meaning of every word since you may be hard pressed to find them in the dictionary, unless I miss my guess.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
7 Characters That Could Replace Wesley Crusher On Star Trek And We Wouldn’t Notice The Difference
I’ve been watching the first and second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation lately (yeah, yeah shut up everyone, so I like Star Trek, just get over it :)). Anyways, aside from all the happy memories of years past, watching it reminded me just how completely annoying Wesley Crusher was. Yeah, he was smart and all, but how sickeningly sweet can you possibly get?
So in one of my trademark leaps of logic I started thinking about some other characters from movies and shows that either annoyed me, made me cringe at their total sweetness or made me say “Yeah right!” at the unlikelihood of the stuff they accomplished. I came up with seven and I am thinking we could seamlessly swap these character with Wesley and both shows would hardly notice the difference.
This guy must be kidding, I hear you say. Nope he is deadly serious, that’s right, serious like a fox! Here is the list:
What’s Your Team Building Budget? - Creating and Recognising Team Building Opportunities
Original image courtesy of http://www.mainevents.co.uk
It sometimes amazes me how much emphasis the corporate world places on teamwork without actively doing anything about facilitating the team forming process. Teams are often expected to form “naturally”, because surely if a bunch of random people are thrown together they are bound to start cooperating effectively eventually, right? In million dollar projects, the amount of money allocated to team building is effectively zero, the attitude seems to be – “team building require budget, that’s unpossible!” – and that’s when team building is even on the agenda.
On the other end of the scale, it also sometimes amazes me how overly concerned with facilitating team building the corporate world seems to be. Huge budgets are allocated to various activities for the sole purpose of possibly creating a better team. Awkward corporate retreats, contrived team building activities, hokey trust exercises those are all a staple of the team building junky and no amount of money is too large to get more of that kind of stuff happening.
The Real Measure Of Code Quality
There was a comic going around a few weeks ago about code quality, you remember the one:
Pretty amusing, but it got me thinking, what IS a good measure of code quality? Quality after all is very subjective, what I might perceive as being great, you might perceive as crappy for a host of reasons. A pet pattern wasn’t used quite right, the unit tests aren’t “real” unit tests, you know of a library that would have made the whole thing 10 times easier, etc.
There are all sorts of different measures that might relate to code quality, the level of coupling, the testability of the code, the test coverage, adherence to standards and many others and yet all of these are still subjective to a degree. There are times when not adhering to standards is best, just as there are times when a low level of coverage is good enough, it is all different from system to system, situation to situation. So is there no one good measure of code quality?
If Obama Were A Programmer His Campaign Slogan Would Be…
Original picture courtesy of thehollywoodgossip.com
How You Can Slouch On All Types Of Ergonomic Chairs
I recently upgraded my computer chair to a fully ergonomic model. Nothing too fancy or weird, just a regular chair but with fully adjustable everything. I used to slouch terribly in my old chair so I considered the $500+ (yeah I know, not as much as some, but still not too shabby) that I spent on my new chair an investment in my health and posture. When I brought my chair home, I had all the best intentions in mind, I would adjust everything perfectly and begin to sit at my computer properly, according to all the rules. I lasted about 3 hours after that I was back to my old slouching ways.
It’s the funniest thing, but maintaining correct posture while sitting at your computer is damned uncomfortable, no matter what chair you use, which means I for one start slouching very quickly. So, after finding some comfortable and creative ways to slouch in my new chair I decided to do some research and find out if there is an ergonomic chair out there that can completely prevent you from ruining your posture slouching.