I have being toying with the idea of creating software “Robots” to help on different areas of the development process, repetitive task, automatable task, etc. I have quite a few ideas where to begin. My problem is that I work mostly alone, as a freelancer, and work tends to pill up, and I don’t like to extend or “blow” deadline dates. I ...
I always have, either by factoring it into the cost initially or just charging by the hour. Upon talking with another developer, who is older and been around the industry longer than I have been, he said that wasn't honest. Usually with products I like to give a guarantee for a few weeks, but ongoing bug support for life seems a bit cr...
I've been working on a project and there is a "must" kind of a deal breaker for the whole project. I asked around, asked in SO ( with 550 bounty ), spend about 3 days to find a solution. I found the solution but couldn't implement it in .NET. At the end I stuck. Now what should I do? I was thinking about going to a rentacoder alike ...
I'm looking for some quick thoughts about a business application I am looking to build. I'd like to separate the three layers of presentation, domain logic, and data using PHP, Python, and PostgreSQL, respectively. I would like to hear, possibly from other folks who have gone down this path before, if there are problems with this approa...
We are working on standardizing our Bugzilla application across all projects. The default installation has bugs grouped into Products which have Components and Versions. We are united in our definitions of Product and Version but there is still some confusion/discussion/argument about what constitutes a Component. How would you define ...
When you have an idea that is blazing through your head for a product, yet everything that is right with the world tells you to plan this application before jumping into a code rush, what methods do you use to prevent rushing to code? From my experience planning software as apposed to building the software ad-hoc has always proven to ...
A few weeks ago I asked the question "Is a PHP, Python, PostgreSQL design suitable for a non-web business application?" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/439759/is-a-php-python-postgresql-design-suitable-for-a-business-application A lot of the answers recommended skipping the PHP piece and using Django to build the application. As I've...
Hello! What resources do you recommend, in order to learn use case driven development ? ...
Clearly, software projects are different from other industries in terms of many things like for instance, quality assurance, project progress measurement, and many other things. Unique characteristics of software projects also makes the risk management process unique. Lots of issues in a project might lead it to unacceptable delay or f...
Cal Henderson (of Flickr fame) gave a keynote "Why I hate Django" at DjangoCon 2008, which is well worth a watch for many reasons. In one bit he asked how many of the audience were working on blogging engines. So many people put their hands up in fact that of those that didn't he asked "Why aren't you?" Anecdote aside, I see so many q...
Looking at the cool new principles of software development: Agile You Ain't Gonna Need It Less As A Competitive Advantage Behaviour-Driven Development The Evils Of Premature Optimization The New Way seems to be to dive in and write what you need to achieve the first iteration of scope objectives, and refactor as necessary to have ele...
I'm reading Code Complete 2, and I'm curious about the metaphor he mentions used by Paul Heckel between writing software and filming Snow White. Does anyone now the details about this? Thanks. ...
I work in a software company which has been existence for 27 years, and, as a result, the software framework on which our applications run is all home grown, as it predated most of the standards that are commonplace now. Consequently, day to day work involves a lot of exposure to the low level details of machine and code. A lot of C wit...
I am designing a new product for my team to develop at my corporate job. I feel the project will pave a new direction for my team. I am creating a presentation to sell the idea; however, I am having trouble naming the solution. Have you ever named a product before? What attributes helped you name your idea? Is a catchy acronym important?...
I am working on a legacy C++ project and missing a third party dll. I was told that the dll will be available in two weeks. The work that I need to perform is pure UI. I don't really need the dll. However, the application won't run without the dll. Should I comment out all the places that the dll get called or create a place holder dll, ...
It's been a while since I've taken over the responsibility of leading my team and I'm probably doing a reasonable job at it. However, I get the feeling that I am not getting enough exposure to the real-world responsibilities and activities that Team Leaders engage in. On the other hand, it might be I am doing much more than an average Te...
Is it possible to use Six Sigma Quality Management with Software Development Processes? What's your experience on that? If you're using an Agile method like Scrum or XP, isn't Six Sigma too bureaucratic? I'm talking about quality management on software development as a whole, since requirements gathering until deployoment and operatio...
Which practices and tools do you use to manage quality in your software projects? Please, consider the software development cycle as a whole and not only the construction phase. That means that best practices for this phase are already known answers, such as: Test-driven design & development Automated and unit testing Continuous integ...
Personally I really prefer Unit Testing and write them for "good" coverage. (let's say I try as hard as possible to write good tests ;) As usual some time later someone different needs to add some features to the code (add methods to classes and so on). He doesn't break those written unit tests but refuses to write additional (which wou...
DUPLICATE: Best filemanager for developer I don’t like the windows explorer. It lakes several important and productive features for developer. I personally have tried 2 UltraExplorer and CubicExploere. Like both I now only use CubicExplorer because it is being actively maintained, and find it more stable. What other File Managers are...