fighting the lack of good ideas
In my eBook, Debugging and Supporting Software Systems, I wrote about several aspects of submitting good bug reports and support ticket, how to communicate, and more. If you’re ever troubleshooting a problem, it is universally helpful to enable the most verbose output possible in logging (stdout, stderr, and log files). You may not want it…
New record for longest blog title I’ve ever had. I think. First, the pros: it’s concise, finishing at a mere 91 numbered pages, including sample questions and the index. Second, the cons: it’s 63 pages of bullet points with little-to-no explanation of terms, examples, etc. William Manning appears to have done an admirable job of…
9 years ago, Paul Graham made a controversial statement: [W]hen you choose a language, you’re also choosing a community. The programmers you’ll be able to hire to work on a Java project won’t be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your…
Many (if not all) companies have provisos when you become a salaried employee that you not discuss your salary/compensation package with other employees. Most people have been raised in a mindset, largely because their parents have worked for companies like this (and maybe their grandparents, too – it is 2013, after all, and this is…
At the beginning of 2008 I interviewed with a little outfit* in Annapolis to become their head of support. (This was just a month after interviewing with FogCreek.) Oddly enough that day, one of my former colleagues at Opsware who had moved-on was my tech screener. Needless to say, that aspect of the interview I…
In Mastery, Robert Greene continues in the style of his excellent work, The 48 Laws of Power (which I previously reviewed and have been posting excerpts from). Sadly, it is not quite to the level of The 48 Laws – though it still a good book. Unbeknownst to me, I’ve already been practicing most of what…
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” You’ve probably been asked that questions hundreds of times in your life – parents, friends, teachers, yourself, movies. It’s a common theme. For most of us, the decision gets made sometime in our late teens or during college: doctor, mom, lawyer, electrician, plumber, teacher, policeman,…