professionalism

Should programmers have to be part of a professional body to practice?

Accountants, lawyers, doctors (and many other professions) have respected professional bodies that are responsible for awarding chartered status to the members. Through this mechanism, they gain trust and respect and can demonstrate that they adhere to a code of standards and ethics, and maintain their skills to keep them current. Progr...

When you're the new guy and you keep seeing dumb things - do you refactor them?

Do you refactor when you see things like this? Or do you just plug your nose and move on? public Collection<DataValidationRuleBase> GetFieldValidationRules(String key) { Collection<DataValidationRuleBase> found = null; try { this.mRules.TryGetValue(key, out found); } catch (Ar...

Adopting bug tracking / project management software: To open source or not to open source?

My manager has recently asked my team and I for our input about implementing a bug tracking / project management solution. From his perspective, he would like more visibility around where our projects actually are in the grand scheme of things as well as the ability to see some analysis on how bugs are being caught and addressed. My ol...

Should client pay for things overlooked in the spec?

For a client, I developed a web-application and took responsibility for the hosting of the site. They squeezed the price really low (fixed-price contract), but I wanted the project so took it anyway. The system just records sales details and generates reports off this data. The information is sensitive to some extent, but not mission cr...

Your code is lightweight. Any more?

Hi all, When we want to compliment someone on their programming code which is neat, clear and the file only takes a few kilobytes, are there any good professional words that we can use to praise him / her? The one that I used most is "Your code is lightweight." But I had seen some people say "it's light-coded" Please suggest yours ....

Professional tips on dealing with non technical managers?

So here in the wonderful world of "La-la Land", I lead a team of data and software devs. Great, super. I report to someone who is a Project Manager by trade but wants oh so badly to be thought of as a technical person. In fairness, this person does TRY, but this person gives out totally incorrect information to the business units as w...