Customer Polarizing - Why Microsoft Will Always Be A Mediocre Giant

Filed Under Thought Stuff, Human Factors | 4 Comments

I have come to grow very tired of Microsoft’s approach to building and marketing software to the masses, and here is the simple reason why:

When you build software for everybody, you build software for nobody.

I don’t remember where I picked up the term “customer polarizing” (I believe it was 37 signals), but it really resonated […]

Refactoring Code Is Like Doing The Dishes

Filed Under Thought Stuff, Software Process | 6 Comments

Regardless of language and skill set, all developers have to constantly revisit their code and refactor. Although you can look at it optimistically and view it as an opportunity for continuous improvement, many of us also take the pessimistic view that it is a chore.
Unfortunately, either way you look at it refactoring is a […]

Forced To Write English Syntax Code - Simplicity or Burden?

Filed Under Thought Stuff, Human Factors, Code | 25 Comments

This is a guest post by Jurgen Appelo. Jurgen is the CIO of the #1 fastest growing technology company in the Netherlands.

Did you know that only two countries, the United States and Canada, participate in what the Americans call the "World Series"? It’s as stupid as it is hilarious. The average American doesn’t know that […]

Does Satisfice Mean Agile?

Filed Under Thought Stuff, Software Process | 1 Comment

Satisfy + Suffice = Satisfice
The term satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon in context to economics, that is, that we will exert enough energy to reach the minimum level of acceptability in something but never reach the maximum potential.
Furthermore, Simon pointed out that human beings lack the cognitive resources to maximize: we usually do not […]

Comfort vs. Confidence - A Thin Line Between Apathy and Assurance

Filed Under Thought Stuff, Human Factors | 3 Comments

At the beginning of every project the question is always muttered at least once:

So which language/framework are we going to build this in?
This is a complete guess, but I would wager that 90% of new projects are built with the same technology that the previous project used.
True, there are a subset of developers […]

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