My organization is doing a lot of new development using Scrum, while maintaining a lot of old code. While we try to keep each development team focused on the task at hand, it is difficult because many team members "own" a piece of historic code that needs to be maintained. Some organizations solve this problem with a separate maintenanc...
I'm a pretty active command line user and I have shell accounts all over the place. MacBooks, Linux desktop machines, Linux servers, Cygwin on XP, you name it. How can I keep my shell configuration (.bashrc, .vimrc etc.) in sync across all these machines using the limited tools available across all platforms? I have been using rsync in...
I've used a variety of computer furniture over the years and was wondering what other folks liked? My current workstation at home is the couch because my wife has taken over my 48" Anthro Cart for her own computing needs. To clarify: I'm in the market for new furniture myself workstation and while I'm looking for better than IKEA level...
What things interrupt developers during the day and really derail your progress? Phone calls, OS issues, Email, change control, meetings, announcements, etc. Which in particular make you change gears to the point that it takes a significant amount of time to return to a programming task. ...
OK, to cut a long story short: I recently got moved on to a project, due for release about a month ago. The project was borked. The project is still not ready for release, although the customer is convinced otherwise. I have been working stupid hours trying to clean up the mess (read a naughty word that starts with 's' and ends in 'hit...
Just watching Jim McCarthy's talk about 11 commitments for shared vision over at InfoQ and it got me thinking. Specifically, how important is having a shared vision to a team? Looking back over my, wow-is-it-that-long, many years in this game I see that the best teams that I've worked on have had a shared vision and shared commitment t...
I have read that what you keep on your desk is very influential in how you work and your level of productivity. I am trying to optimise the way that I work (I am a terrible procrastinator), and am curious what other programmers' desks look like. What do you have on your desk? Is there anything you deliberately avoid? There is no need...
When starting a programming project, how do you jump start yourself to do a task that you just despise doing? ...
What hardware device do you use, that helps aid your software development productivity? The obvious would be a killer keyboard, mouse and multi-monitor rig... but what else do you use, that helps you out? ...
Off and on I have read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" productivity books but never really implemented it. What tools do you use to track tasks and projects? How do you organize tasks when 95% of your tasks would be in the @Computer folder? ...
I downloaded the free CodeRush Xpress version to try it. Is there a way to change the colors it uses for it's highlighting and line drawing? ie the matching braces. I have a dark color scheme and my monitor I have VS on must suck because I can't see the lines. Yet on the LCD I can. Is there a way to change the colors? ...
I'd like to re-ask the How to justify a workstation upgrade question that Garry Shutler asked with the context of some of the excellent answers given. I believe that quantifying the productivity increase (extra working hours) is the most effective way to do this. My case in point: I have a fast machine at home and a slow one at work. M...
While using Vim (at home and at work), I often find myself doing similar things repeatedly. For example, I may turn a bunch of CSV text into a series of SQL inserts. I've been using Vim for years, but only recently have I tried to seriously think about how I could improve my productivity while using it. My question is.. Is there a good ...
Locking doors or putting on headphones is more of an avoidance strategy which tends to reduce productivity. Instead, I'm looking for ways to increase productivity. How do you maintain focus and reduce interruptions in your workplace? ...
In an attempt to be a better programmer, I am planning to read a lot of books and learn at least one new language (which I think is going to be python) during the 3-month long holiday that I am going to have. The list of books that I am planning to read -- Code Complete 2 Learning Python Introduction to Algorithms (along with the lect...
How do I make all occurrences of a phrase (search term) in a file to be highlighted in the VS code editor? ...
Let me clear what is state information of a project: Any information that have to remembered or written and then retrieved when one resume its work on a project (for example, on the next morning when arrives at work, or at the evening when start to work on the side project). For example, when you open the project/solution how, where an...
Are there any obvious productivity gains in developing using webforms or MVC? ...
I would like to design very high availability(never take server down, roll out features without restart etc) application with both client(probably C# gui) and server components(Java,C++,Perl). I got some advice from (minimize-code-maximize-data.html and Yegge), and I would like to make most logic dynamically readable from database so t...
As programmers I'm sure many (if not all) of us have scripts which automate parts of our daily work/play. I was curious as to how others organize their scripts? Do you categorize your scripts? Do you put them in source control? Do you follow any uniform coding conventionss? Do you document them? ...