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Articles and Essays
About these Articles
From time to time I get motivated to write down some of the thoughts rolling around in my head - sometimes as a process of sorting out for myself what I think; sometimes because I think my thought are worth sharing.
Generally, the articles fall into the following broad categories:
- Software Development - especially what it means to be professional.
- User Interaction - what's good (or not) about GUIs and how to be more effective.
- Reviews - Of Books, Websites, whatever catches my interest.
Whenever I post or update an article, I make an announcement in my blog.
Software Development
Agile Development - The People Factor
There is anecdotal evidence that Agile projects work. I believe that the quality of the people involved is more important than the agileness of the project.
Development Approaches: Hacking
There are many ways in which the development process can be approached. Use the wrong technique in the wrong place and the result is never good. When should hacking be used?
Development Paradigms
What makes the difference between systems that come together easily working so well, and systems that seem to fight back all the time? Why is it that some projects seem so easy, but other (similar projects) seem so hard? I believe it is due to working with or against the tool.
Nature of Quality
What is Quality, and where does it come from? This article takes the stance that Quality is not an external quality imposed from without, but something intrinsic that needs to be built in from day one.
User Interaction
Huffman Coded GUIs
Insight can often be gained by applying knowledge from one discipline to another. Here, we see how the concepts behind data compression can make life easier for the users of our applications. Visual Source Safe is due for a makeover.
Options and Preferences
How can a simple thing like user preferences be completely screwed up? All it takes is a bunch of developers more focussed on the next feature than the overall picture. ER-Studio is a typical sufferer.
Reviews
SmallTalk Best Practice Patterns
What relevance can a book about SmallTalk have for the rest of the development world? Quite a bit, actually.