Matthew's Weblog

This year’s Turing Lecture – insights…

Ready for your computer to whisper sweet nothings in your ear with no one else to hear?  Sign me up…

Here’s a listing of dates/times that usually mean you have a software bug.  Fun and useful…

A good article describing MS SQL Server’s security setup.

Technorati Tags: ms+sql, security

An overview – with a possible scoring system – for picking which open source projects will survive and thrive.  A good set of characteristics and something that I mostly follow but not so well thought out as theirs. Something useful for future evaluations…

Technorati Tags: open+source, business+software

An article (a bit self-aggrandizing) on how to improve software quality. Most interesting is the Software Testing Maturity Model (S-TMM)… I’ll have to read more about it.

Technorati Tags: S-TTM, software+quality

Article from Computerworld about Google’s application deployment system, Slack and how it is used…

Technorati Tags: google, web+application, standard+operating+environment

An interesting article that addresses the different perils of multiple simultaneous processes and how to work around them, without programmer agonies.

From an interview with Kent Beck and Tom DeMarco:

Kent: … I think of managers as people with more experience, a broader perspective, perhaps more wisdom about what’s going on and good people skills. And looking at the connections between if a manager has nothing better to do than to come and tell me I haven’t written enough tests that day — to me, that’s not a lot of value to be added there. That’s not about me and my relationships to other people or the team and its relationships to its customers and suppliers. I mean to me that’s where the value of having somebody with a step back with broader perspective is.

Tom: I think the key phrase here is, if the manager has nothing better to do. I think if you replace that with, if the manager has nothing easier to do, then that would lead you a slightly different direction. Because coordination is the relatively easy thing, what Cindy was talking about is managers could manage, that’s hard stuff, that means involves motivation, it involves interpersonal relationships. So I think that is the distinction between real managers and imposters who find themselves pushed into that position and end up looking for the easy stuff to do. And the easy stuff is what people will do on their own if you don’t do it.

That’s what it’s all about.
Technorati Tags: software+development, management, xp

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