SOHO Agile – Practices make perfect
If you follow what we call football in the UK or soccer as it is known in the US and other parts of the world you will probably have heard of David Beckham. He was a very successful football player who played for the UK football team Manchester United in his early career and L.A. […]
On Technical Debt and Craftsmanship
Technical debt is something we, as developers, live with every day. Sometimes a pragmatic solution needs to take precedence over a perfect solution. A software craftsmanship purist would argue that you should always strive for the perfect solution but in my opinion this is not always practical.
The No Route Back SatNav Software Update
Allowing the user to revert a version of software to a previous version is an essential part of maintainable software development and deployment. Even if this is an uninstall and a re-install of an older version. In my experience every system is unique and when software is deployed you can never guarantee 100% install success.
Why I will Always Try And Find A Ready-Built Library
No matter how good your code is, there will always be parts which do not work as well as you want. These are sometimes called bugs. There are also times when we think building something ourselves will be more cost effective, if for no other reason than we simply know the code better.
Every Library Needs and Index
Imagine walking into a library, and having to walk up and down the aisles trying to find the book you want. You may find the book eventually, or you may not. One thing is for sure it would take you a long time. If it takes you too long, most probably you’ll end up walking […]
The Methodology Doesn’t Matter, It’s Having One That Counts
Methodologies can get very religious. Should we be doing TDD? Should we use Waterfall? Should we have stand-up meetings? What sort of continuous delivery should we use? A few years back I was diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes. At the time I was diagnosed I was not particularly overweight and my diet was not […]
Simplicity Is Hard
Developers, in my experience, tend to be creative people and creative people can sometimes over complicate stuff. When a developer is struck by the lightning of inspiration the first thing that they usually want to do is start hammering the keyboard
Release Regularly, Release Often
When writing plugins, as a SOHO developer, the trickiest part is testing your software. Users are like aliens from another world. When they get their hands on your plugin, I can guarantee that they will use it in ways that you have never thought. Consequently, your code is never really tested until it gets into […]
The Hidden Value Of Custom Taxonomies
When people tell me they are about to embark on a web project, being the technology nerd that I am, I usually ask them about how they will implement it (or usually how they have implemented it). And when they tell me they have used this or that technology and not WordPress I always have […]
Design Reviews vs Code Reviews
I was performing a code review with one of my colleagues, Lee, the other day and we were arguing about how a piece of code should work. I said it should work this way, he said it should work that way. We were being a bit vocal about it when another one of my colleagues, […]
