Many seasoned software developers complete a career without studying software development patterns. They write fully functional code, and often use patters without being aware. As I have shown people different patterns it is not unusual for someone to say something like, “Oh. I do that all the time. I just didn’t know it was called that.” What, then, is the […]

What’s wrong with this? Following is an example snippet of code written in C#. It is syntactically correct. It is functionally correct. It accurately returns the results specified by the requirements (that I just made up). Still, there is a major flaw in this snippet of code. This is not a trick question. Can you see the problem? For (int […]

Just ship the software already! Have you ever felt like getting on top of your desk and shouting this phrase? Have you ever worked on the project that just wouldn’t quit? Every time I get into a situation like this I remember the story I was told about my Father’s travel trailer business. My father was a mechanical engineer. When […]

Data scientists have been attempting to influence the creation of a new data type for storage engines relating to time. Currently, we have data types based around date, time and the combination, date and time. If you wish to know something about the durability of those features, it requires an additional instance. So, if a fact is true from Monday […]

12 years ago I was working at a company developing electronic telephone bills. We put their data into a proprietary format, and burned it along with one or more CDs, including data and the latest version of our application. This was shipped to the customer monthly. It was a very automated and smooth process for everything except the building, testing […]

Today my son asked me, “What is fahrenheit?” I was explaining to him that Fahrenheit is a scale used to measure temperature. There are different scales. The scientific community generally prefers celsius. In farenheigt, water freezes at 32 degrees. In celsius, water freezes at 0 degrees. So, a scale is a tool to compare things, and demonstrate the difference. A […]

I find it interesting that modern applications, built using stateless architectures, usually maintain state. Let me explain what I’m getting at. I like to play solitaire on my cell phone. I can hide the app, close the app, or even power down my phone. If I return to the application at a later time, it comes back to where I […]

Reading Steve Jones editorial today reminded me about protecting data on mobile devices. I have observed that many developers are moving to laptop computers. In my case, the reason is portability. I may be moving to work with another developer at their desk, in a conference room, or even offsite, or at home. Like many developers, I have things on […]

A couple decades ago I remember a mentor telling me that programmers would no longer be needed within 10 years or so. Everything would be encapsulated in objects, and we would simply plug objects together to fulfill our software requirements. Twenty years later I find myself still writing the same code over and over again. Tonight I am asking myself […]

John D. Rockefeller, was an Ohio native in the USA. He started Standard Oil. At one time he the world’s richest man and first ever American billionaire. This was in the early 1900’s, when a Billion Dollars was much more than we would imagine today. A reporter is said to have asked him, “How much money is enough?” Rockefeller was […]