Helltime for September 20

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• Antonio Cangiano offers insights on the process of hiring programmers, interns in particular. It was interesting that he observed the Dunning-Kruger effect when listing qualifications. I’ll admit that if I were to be interviewed right at this moment, I too would probably struggle with the algorithmic questions, and that is because I don’t deal with these questions day-to-day. It is a reminder for me brush up on them here. I’d be curious to know if Antonio observed and inverse relationship between proficiency in “programming in the real world” and proficiency in knowledge of algorithms.
• I had all but forgotten about the Infinite Mario awesomeness, and then I found a post from Ben Weber, not about Infinite Mario, but about data mining that game. Apparently, Ben endeavors to write a version of Infinite Mario that adapts to the player’s skill level. Awesome.
• Finally, from Stack Overflow clone Stack Exchange (apparently it’s been a while since I used to frequent Stack Overflow), find a discussion about why programmers are arrogant. However, it is a shame that the correct answer is buried so far near the bottom. Oh dear — did that sound arrogant?

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Helltime for September 13

Announcer: Now for quick hits and commentary on software development topics from around the web, the EIP web-ring brings you the stigmatized spawn of a refactory, MoffDub, and Helltime!

• Now here is a post that has me thinking about my latest foray into Erlang. Gojko Adzic opines that the Actor model of concurrency is the next step in object-orientation and actually forces people to write better objects. I’m not so sure that is the case. First of all, I don’t think I would design a system where every would-be object is a process instead. Second of all, because of the first point, people will probably only inject concurrency where it is needed for better performance. Those seams in the code aren’t likely to coincide with fantastic object design.
• Get your balance on at CodeBalance and compare five different ways to implement the Singleton pattern. It’s a good read, and a reminder to let your runtime environment handle as much of that stuff as you can. This has production defect written all over it.
• Old-timer Alfred Thompson offers sage advice from academia: objects aren’t the right tool for everything. It is a specialization of the saying “when you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail”. He touches upon something I’d like to get more into, and that is integrating different, diverse languages in a single project. I’m not talking about Scala and Java, or F# with C#. Common frameworks are for wimps.

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Helltime For August 23

Announcer: Now for quick hits and commentary on software development topics from around the web, the EIP web-ring brings you the stigmatized spawn of a refactory, MoffDub, and Helltime!

• Watts S. Humphrey of the SEI takes a step back in the July/August issue of CrossTalk and tries to figure out why large software projects almost always fail. The big takeaway for me from this lengthy article is that Watts first says that managers aren’t the problem, but rather the management method: managers like to “Manage By Walking Around”, and this works because they can see, feel, and hear the work being done as it is being done; he goes on to say that because software is different because it is essentially imaginary, these typical techniques do not work, and managers end up sticking their noses where it doesn’t belong and generally pissing everyone off; finally, Watts says that the engineers must manage themselves since they know the work best and can give the most accurate reports and status!

  So who needs managers? I swear, every time I make a joke about those people (managers), it comes true.

• To see how the new kids on the block are looking at us OO old-timers, take a read at Isaac Hodes’ CopperThoughts blog, where he covers Java for Clojure programmers. Aside from the accurate description of classes in functional terms (“A class is a bundle of methods (functions which act on the class) that can serve as a data type.”), it is interesting to see the syntax Clojure uses for Java methods; it seems that a method name is passed to a function as data, kind of like Smalltalk. It harks back to my playing around in various functional languages to force-fit OO where it didn’t really belong.
• Dan McComas, web developer for BayCitizen, fears becoming an old web developer because he cannot think of any he has worked with recently. He figures that most of the people that would have been 50+ developers are now managers. Now, he contemplates abandoning the virtuous path of code creation. Don’t do it, Dan. Don’t do it.

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