So SCRUM / Kanban / Lean is the greatest project management methodology ‘invented’, and all these fantastic advances took place within the last few decades? That’s just plain silly, the greatest single thing that makes process improvement possible is our innate ability as a species to do a little thing called reflection. Please don’t focus too much [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Opinions and Observations category.
The value of communities in software
The computing industry has spawned many communities which have an influence that spans across different online and offline sectors of society. These communities reach and bring together people from around the world with common interests and purposes. This stimulates productiveness in developing and using software. I would also argue that another effect these communities have in [...]
Search Technologies… Lucene, Solr and the importance of ‘Search’
Reflecting the nature of trends in web user experience, my work as a developer has led me to be quite involved in the field of ‘search’. It’s fair to say I never fully appreciated how important information retrieval / search theory would become in my career, and what ‘search’ is really all about. A few [...]
Book review – Masters of Doom
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture By David Kushner I used to be a very avid gamer, and I would estimate I’ve spent thousands of hours of my youth playing the Doom and Quake games. They were fantastically immersive and exciting. But I haven’t seriously touched a game in years, [...]
What do you want from life? – the question we should be asking post economic disaster
Its a heady, deep and widely avoided question – what do we really want from life? As the world is gradually recovering from economic disaster, I argue this question becomes increasingly more important to ask both yourself, those around you and ultimately force politicians to answer for themselves too. A healthy economy is too fluffy [...]
The Future of Social Networking
This was an old post I vaguely remember starting aimlessly which quickly turned into an essay, I decided it was time to dust it off and see if some of my musings and gripes about social networking are still relevant over two years later! One could write a diatribe about social networking and the continued [...]
Top 5 irritating UX trends
Time I think for an indulgent digression on user interface design. Firstly I should make it clear, I’m not a designer… but I have been responsible for implementing plenty of designs and using a bit of my own creative inspiration for user interfaces. Also this is pure personal opinion, though I’ve discussed these features with [...]
It doesn’t have to be the cloud vs software
The word cloud used in the context of technology evokes a conflicted reaction from me. I am simultaneously both compelled and repelled by changes in the technology industry under the banner of ‘the cloud’. It’s important to be clear about what I am discussing here. In its rawest definition cloud computing means technology delivered over the internet. [...]
Dennis Ritchie passes away… Paying tribute to the unsung heroes of technology
In recent days Steve Jobs’ sad death has been heavily covered by bloggers and the press, along with summaries of his life achievements. Another key figure in the development of the technology we all use everyday has also sadly passed away recently. Dennis Ritchie was best known for being the creator of the C programming [...]
Moving on
Very soon I shall be joining a new company, Open Objects, in Cambridge and moving to the area. I am forever grateful for the experience gained at my previous employer and I wish them all the best for the future. I’ll be moving to the area with my lovely girlfriend whom I’m proud to say [...]
Disoriented programming
Here’s a little something to chew over – what would happen if we removed the structure and constraints imposed on the working developer? Would everything descend into chaos and be wholly unproductive… or would great things emerge with natural order from the lack of burocracy and politics? There has always been much discussion of Google’s ’20% time’, [...]
The real cost of student debt
I recently graduated from university and began full time employment in the software industry. The discussion over the rise in tuition fees that has taken place in the UK and the general situation of having just finished a degree has got me thinking about attending university and its financial viability. My own opinion is rapidly [...]
Are all standards inherently flawed?
In the world of software development when you come to implement something for real, using technologies that are supposed to conform to open standards, it is very often the case that those technologies are not quite as rigidly standardised as you might have hoped. To put this into a wider context most computer users would [...]
University project complete, outlook on current affairs and lessons learnt over the last few years
I’ve finally completed the lion’s share of the work and submission for a large university project today and as one tends to do when they have exam revision to be done I am reflecting [procrastinating] on life in general. This post will start with an abstract and possibly largely irrelevant outlook on the world today, [...]
EJBs in the three tier system
This is primarily written as a basic primer for those CMP students on the same course as me that are struggling and or frustrated with Enterprise JavaBeans. I won’t give any course work specific info, but hopefully this may help at least a bit. Firstly I should probably mention I have worked in a real [...]
Stuff I’ve done and stuff I’ve learnt…
In the last few months I’ve been working intensively on my current main project. It’s easy to lose perspective on certain things when you’re working so closely to a particular project. So in a quick breather while one of my applications is building for the several hundredth time, I thought I would recap a bit. [...]
OAuth for Google Data API – not that easy to implement
Google are fantastic at building APIs, but their authentication mechanisms (while I’m sure are very secure) are not always the easiest thing to implement. I’m working with the Google Data APIs at the moment for my project, for which an app needs access to google accounts, cue OAuth. Anyone who doesn’t agree it is difficult [...]
Taking Intelligent Architectures to the Cloud Expo
A week and a half ago I represented my software development organisation, Intelligent Architectures, at the combined Cloud, Linux and Open Source Expo. I was mainly promoting a project that has grown out of my final year university work. It was an interesting experience and a good opportunity for me to talk some people about this [...]
Programming… its really not that scary
It was only until recently that, when taking a step back from what I have been working on, I realised how dramatically my attitude towards programming has changed. Four years ago I started out on a journey that transformed my anxieties about programming, something that now forms an integral part of my career choice. At [...]
Student protests – why violence doesn’t help anyone
It seems there is a sub-culture that increasingly rears its head whenever protests, whether they be about student fees, the economy or war, are carried out in London. This sub-culture seems largely anarchistic in its behaviour. Whether this is a sub set of the protesters, a separate group or a mixture of the two is difficult to [...]
