Published at 11:39 on 28 September 2011
I think that, ironically enough, it can.
I interviewed at some anonymous company that was big on XP (aka “Extreme Programming”): pair programming, test-driven development, etc. One thing I will say is that they did a very good job if interviewing, giving candidates an actual opportunity to try the techniques they use out.
And one thing that struck me about test-driven development was that it makes it very difficult to write code in a bottom-up fashion. The basic response was something along the lines of “you just don’t do that.” Lovely. A powerful and productive technique that you “just don’t do” because the methodology you have required people to adhere to does not allow for it.
And what if programmers sometimes come up with better ideas on their own? Sorry, no can do, either. Pair programming doesn’t allow for alone time.
“Sorry, we’d like to incorporate that feature change, but we’ve frozen the feature set because the software is now in alpha test. We just can’t do that.” Funny how the supposed diametric opposite of the traditional waterfall model ends up sounding so much like it.
The problem here is one of taking rules too seriously. Any set of rules — it fundamentally does not matter which ones. You cannot fix such a problem merely by choosing the right set of fixed rules, no matter how enlightened the motivation behind the choice of them might happen to be.
If you can’t make exceptions for exceptional cases, you’re going to end up sometimes forcing people to act like stupid robots, doing something suboptimally because that’s the only way The Rules allow for it to be done.
Published at 10:50 on 23 September 2011
Really, can there be any other succinct summary of the highly dubious practice of cybersquatting (or “domain investing” if you’re a fan of the Newspeak of the pro-cybersquatter crowd)?
If you don’t need an Internet domain name yourself, simply don’t buy it and it will be available for purchase by someone who does. Buying a domain just because you think someone else might want to buy it later and be willing to pay an inflated price contributes absolutely nothing to society. In fact, it harms others, by complicating the process of obtaining a domain and compelling them to pay more than they otherwise would have.
Sure, it’s legal, but it’s neither ethical or socially useful.
Published at 13:43 on 16 September 2011
I’ve known about it for some time, of course, but my recent move to WordPress has driven it home yet again. The WordPress screen to create and edit blog posts makes heavy usage of Javascript. It also hangs about 50% of the time one hits the “Publish” or “Update” buttons when using Safari. I have yet to have it hang on me when using Firefox, and of couse (after being burned by Safari during my first few attempts), I use Firefox much more often than Safari to post here.
Really, this has to be one of those “what’s their problem, anyway?” moments. Safari has had an absolutely lousy Javascript engine (by far the worst one of any major browser) for years.
It’s a pity, as it’s otherwise a very nice browser.
Published at 17:15 on 13 September 2011
- I decided to pay money to host the blog myself, because that option allowed me to avoid Google/Blogger’s creepy terms of use while also avoiding WordPress’ broken CMS (which the hosting site WordPress.COM forces you to use) for hosting the old entries.
- Regarding those old entries, I eventually gave up on trying to import them into the new blog software. It’s too much of a headache to do with WordPress (which perverts imported HTML in strange and unpredictable ways).
- Regarding the blog software, I settled on WordPress, because it’s a popular platform, and of the popular platforms it can run on the least expensive hosting services.
- My main motivation for the transition was to join the modern world and have my blog available for syndication with RSS.
Published at 16:31 on 13 September 2011
It was a process fraught with difficulties, both in converting the old blog to a new format (something I essentially gave up on), and in getting this blog hosted (there were a number of hiccups in the process, you should have been seeing this message on Saturday). And there’s still a fair amount of configuring to do.
Ah, well. The main part of the deed is done at last.
