Posts

Avoid Burnout: Take Time To Unplug

One of the biggest struggles that developers face is burnout. I’ve seen it happen time and time and time again. We do too much. We work 40, 50, 60 or more hours a week in an office doing development work, then come home and spend another 20, 30 or more hours at home working on our personal projects or side clients. Add to all that the various levels of personal commitments we might outside of development, be it family, church, charity work, and so forth. All that time takes its toll and, if we’re not careful, it overwhelms us and we burn out. It happened to me.

Saturday, October 28, 2017 | 9 minutes Read

The Worthlessness of Project Estimates: Why We Still Do Them

Whether we are developers, project managers, business analysts, stakeholders or anyone else involved in the software development process, we all know that estimates for software development are always wrong: ALWAYS. I have never once been involved in a software project that met it’s estimates or even came close. Sometimes we get the job done earlier than estimated, but usually it runs over. You know it. I know it. We all know it. Even if that estimate seems reasonable at the time we do it, it always ends up being wrong. So why do we still bother to do them?

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | 8 minutes Read

What I do as a developer

A lot of people ask me what I do as a developer. Well, it’s pretty simple. I convert marketing promises (more commonly referred to by developers as lies and bullshit) into applications (referred to by developers as see the amazing creation of perfection I have created that somewhat resembles the lies marketing told but is in every way better than their promises anyway). See, it’s simple!

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | 1 minute Read

The Unroll.me Controversy - Its Our Fault

A tweet caught my attention yesterday afternoon that was related to the whole Unroll.me/Uber data collection situation. Users’ data is being anonymized and then sold by Unroll.me, with one of the buyers in this situation being Uber. The co-founder of Unroll.me posted a message to Medium which basically put the responsibility for the controversy on the end users of Unroll.me. While her approach to communication leaves something to be desired, I for one feel that she is totally, completely right. It’s our fault.

Saturday, April 22, 2017 | 4 minutes Read

My Dev Story

One of the things I don’t talk about much is my development history. It’s not that I mind talking about the journey that got me to this point, but I just don’t think about it all that much. I decided, though, it was time to document it so that anyone who might ever be interested can know. Thanks to my late father, my interest in computers and programming started very early. I still remember the day he brought home a little black Sinclair ZX81 computer. I was around 9 years old and I loved tinkering around with the “massive” 1K of memory and the membrane keyboard that was nigh impossible to actually type on. We added a cassette recorder for tape storage, the tiny printer and eventually the huge 16K RAM add-on memory block. It was fun to play around with and I would spend hours entering lines of code copied from a magazine or book. It was my first introduction to programming (and the BASIC language in particular) and it has stuck with me for a lifetime.

Thursday, March 9, 2017 | 7 minutes Read

Mentoring

If you are a student or someone in a different career field and looking to move into software development, I am happy to provide what time I can spare to speak with you 1 on 1 and provide what guidance or insight I can. You can schedule time with me on my Calendly.

Saturday, January 1, 2000 | 1 minute Read

My Creative Side

Not everything is about tech. I’ve got a creative side too… Sometimes. Take a look if you want something other than tech. My Creative Side

Saturday, January 1, 2000 | 1 minute Read

Speaking Engagements

Looking for someone speak on your podcast, video, user group, conference, or company? Here’s a few of my current sessions. Contact me to set up a time.

Saturday, January 1, 2000 | 1 minute Read