Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips It is easy to forget that those of us who write computer programs are basically simulating machines to perform useful tasks. That wonderful computer program known as Visicalc was credited with being the world’s first electronic spreadsheet. The name Visicalc was short for “visible calculator.” Great stuff that transformed many aspects of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips How to write a computer program when you have no idea how to do it in a new language. I wrote a computer program this week at work. (oooops, I am supposed to write that I was developing because that is what the job recruiters call it nowadays.) This shouldn’t sound remarkable, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to one another each day. Sometimes, however, we just didn’t sign up for this talking stuff. In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to other persons. We are supposed to sit next to other persons and work with them. All of us are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We consider what the world calls “computer programmers” these days. Developers. That is what we seem to call computer programmers these days. I work in a building with perhaps a hundred developers. “Are you a developer?” people ask me. Sigh. The trouble is, these developers are not developers because they aren’t developing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The original hackers were the good guys. Some of today’s hackers still are. Nintendo recently brought back a handful of old video games in a clever packages called the NES Classic Edition. They sold a boat-load of them. The trouble is, you can’t add any games to it. Enter good-old hackers who […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Those who don’t program still seek the Holy Grail of business: the ability to flush programmers from their lives. Google recently launched its App Maker. Its a tool kit that allows persons who don’t know how to program to write programs. Well, sort of. I guess Google’s product, similar to other similar […]

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by Dwayne Phillips What could possibly go wrong with moving all your development to the cloud? At least ask the question. Programmers are running to cloud-based integrated development environments (IDEs). Once again, consumers run away from bad services, in this case the IT department, and towards better services, in this case cloud providers. This comes […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are major differences between engineering systems and “just doing it.” The consequences are both obvious and predicted. For at least 25 years, I have heard and seen in action the mantra of “good enough software.” Get a partial solution, ship it, improve it. Great stuff. Except time has shown that the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When you rely upon things from other people, you are sometimes greatly disappointed. This holds for programming computers. Are you a “full-stack developer?” Do you argue about what a full-stack developer is? Have you been asked, “Given this problem, what stack would you use?” Sigh. Since the pre-historic times of computer programming, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Being a computer programmer does not make me a software engineer. Deep sigh before I begin. This is yet another post borne of frustration in talking with recruiters and hiring managers. Now that the sigh is out of the way. A computer programmer is not a software engineer. There. Wrote that bit. […]

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