Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Ep 64, Fighting Against Company Culture Is Often A Losing Battle


Have you ever worked at a shop where you loved the coding aspect, but hated the culture?  Maybe they were too concerned with ship dates, or overly preoccupied with architecture, or spent too much time chasing frameworks.  When we find ourselves in these predicaments, we often strive to change those parts we don't like, typically with poor results.  In this episode, I dig into that phenomenon.


A new episode of A Programmer Refactored has been posted!

Monday, May 14, 2018

Ep 63, Where Does The User Fit In All This?


The user's place in the software development has changed a lot in the last ten years.  Way back when, the user was a faceless entity that we tended to avoid.  Today, thanks in no small part to the Agile movement, users and user representatives are often key stakeholders from the beginning of the SLDC.  In this episode, I dig into how I think the user fits into today's software development process.


A new episode of A Programmer Refactored has been posted!

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Bonus Ep 3, Reputation: A Cautionary Tale


Reputation.  As programmers, we tend to hang most of our reputation on our coding abilities, if we even think about our reputations at all.  As very technical people, sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that reputation is for managers and other political game players.  The truth is, however, that reputation is highly important, and ignoring that can have horrible consequences.  In this episode, I give a cautionary tale of a programmer who didn't heed that lesson.


A new episode of A Programmer Refactored has been posted!

Monday, May 7, 2018

Ep 62, Gatekeeping and Shadow IT


Gatekeepers, those IT professionals who become so possessive of their systems that they become more of a hindrance than anything else.  In this episode, I talk about gatekeepers in the context of software development and how they lead to shadow IT efforts.


A new episode of A Programmer Refactored has been posted!