From a Windows command line, I'd like to be able to publish to an RSS feed. I visualize something like this: rsspub @builds "Build completed without errors." Then, someone could go to my computer: http://xp64-Matt:9090/builds/rss.xml And there'd be a new entry with the date and time and the simple text "Build completed without erro...
Gamasutra has a couple of very interesting articles Hiring Game Designers and Building A Great Game Team: Measuring Progress Neither of these talk about the hiring process of building out the team as a whole. I believe that great development teams, no matter what you are building, are like rock bands. You can't have a band with all g...
So we have a small team for a certain project. Developer (Python), designer (html/css/jinja2), content manager. Now, often the designer (html/css/jinja2) (who is quite technically adept in a Windows way) will pick up bugs and report them: "Ali, I have a problem with text." Should say "Ali, I am having an exception rendering unicod...
Problem statement The entire codebase was accessible to everyone till now. Now I need to enforce people get code of only those modules which they will work on, for other modules they will get a library as in lib. Assuming we have two modules right now thinkbot (HEAD) -> assemblebot (tree/subdir) -> include -> source -> lib -...
I'm currently working on a team that has half the developers thinking in terms of "objects" and the other half ignore the concepts all together. It's starting to make working together more difficult because the OOP guys (myself included) want to build reusable components that can be leveraged across the system, but the SQL guys just cre...
I've had two intership at the same company and one things that bothered me is the fact that everyone was in their own world doing their stuff and listening to music. I knew I would not want to work there after I graduate even though they would offer me a job if i'm interested. I just didn't like the atmosphere, I like to interact with pe...
I have some developers who are rather green when it comes to object oriented development, and I was looking for a way to explain to him the concept of casting and a few other things. I was doing a code review on some of his code and I find things like protected Guid LastValue { get { if (ViewState["LastValue"] == n...
How do you handle a programmer who is on your team but is extremely ineffective and ends up wasting the time of the rest of the team. I don't mean lazy, but I mean a person who has such weak problem solving skills, that they require a lot of hand-holding to get them to complete the simplest of tasks, that even a student fresh out of ...
I am sure many of us have worked in teams where the teams have a different balance of personalities. Generally I think that having a diverse team is good. If people are too alike they tend to make the same mistakes. Some teams I have worked in have gelled well and worked well together, other times it has been very fraught. I couldn't eas...
What is the best way to help a somewhat stubborn unskilled team member gain some insight and grow as a programmer? One of our network administrators has had a long standing desire to take his hobby java programming to a new level. He hasn't been happy with his current job, so being the altruistic guy that he is, our Boss decided to give...
I'm a freelance developer and have recently set up source control and automated builds (CI and nightly) for a software development team at a client which did not previously use these techniques. Whilst they are now using the source control (albeit somewhat begrudgingly), I just don't seem able to get them bought into the concept of cont...
I am trying to come up with a clear standard to present to my web team so that the frontend HTML/CSS developers and the backend developers can get on the same page. Currently, we all have our own coding styles, and we tend to end up creating more work for each other when we have to dive into each others' code. What sort of CSS/HTML and ...
I was thinking about setting up an asterisk pbx box, and giving everybody a headset and softphone and having our development teams conference and be able to ask questions without getting distracted from their code or leaving their desk. Right now our team uses an IRC server which isn't ideal because they have to context switch from thei...
Solo programmers can practice good programming habits that will help them with group work (good commenting, coding styles, basic communication skills, version control system use) but there are some skills you rarely develop or bother dealing with until you're working on a single project with several people. What are some of the habits y...
Working regurlarly with a small team, we try to devide the process of making a piece of software regarding each of our professions. Despite the effort to maintain a productive workflow, we tend to run into frequent issues. The most common issues are: version control and keeping things controlled and organized overlapping professions w...
I experienced to work with the code which was reviewed, but still of low quality. Actually reviewer looked through the code and could think that this is more formal procedure and didn't pay enough attention to the process of review and said: "I have reviewed the code!". Some small fixes can be made but significant flaws are missed. The ...
I observe a phenomenon that looks like religion to me, only in a development team. Here is an example situation: We are three people working on a small project. The project will involve a public web service that will serve requests by fetching data from a database, and also a separate component (or application) that would fill and updat...
What is the main motivation behind why you contribute to an open source project? Possible reason I have identified: Freedom to express your ideas an environment where you can develop new ideas Relationships, Teamwork and sense of community Professional skills development, including for your resume Employed by an open source or...
A common component is a library or some other piece of code that is created and maintained by one group and used by many groups. Some problems we have are: The users don't report issues with the components. Users build workarounds to the components to suit their needs. They break compatibility with the trunk version just to meet their...
As a technical team lead of a small team of web developers, I have been finding it difficult lately to identify and focus on the core responsibilities of keeping my team running. Specifically, I'm finding myself pulled in several directions between doing actual hands-on development work, allocating work items to team members, making / a...