Month: May 2016

May 24, 2016

Greg Thomas

We should get it for free

I never heard that phrase until I became a developer – “We should get it for free.” What does that even mean? You mean by putting all this effort into creating something, where I’ve put blood, sweat and tears into it all, when something goes wrong… I should get it for free? Or, because I coded this up so well, if we need to tweak something in there, we should get that part for free? Or, because so and so is building XYZ, I don’t have to, so I get it for free? None of those really, ring “free” to me,

May 23, 2016

Greg Thomas

Clarity in Email

Have you ever felt the need to put something like this at the bottom of your emails as your signature line? Forgive the lack of clarity in this email… I am doing so many things concurrently that my responses have become erratic and chaotic at best, misleading at worst.  If you are in any way confused by what I have written please reach out to me for further clarity and don’t worry – I won’t be offended. If you have, if you do, if you are copying and pasting this into your email signature right now, it might be time

May 20, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Optimal Size for a Team

I’ve batted this idea back and forth many times in my head, what is the best size for a team?  At what size does the team remain too small to not accomplish enough and at what size does a team become too large that more time is spent on administration, overhead and the team eventually starts to slow.  Whether it’s a startup or an established company, team cohesion and leadership is critical to success. What is the magic number? For me, it’s 7. For you, it may be 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 25. At 7 (not including yourself), you have

May 19, 2016

Greg Thomas

Return on Investment Cost

This isn’t a new term, it’s nothing you have not heard from. When selling products or services to customers there is an exchange that happens between the buyer and seller for the receipt of the product and/or service. To the seller it is what they need to earn in order to keep doing what they do, to the buyer, it is what they need to pay to attain the product and/or service (ps). The buyer will typically associate this with the cost of that ps when really it could not be further from the truth.  The buyer has no idea what the

May 18, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Perfect Software Architecture

The Perfect Software Architecture has the following characteristics; It starts backup when the server goes down. When an internal component fails, it restarts it, releases the instance and starts again. It can run for hours, days, weeks, months and years with no maintenance. If a connection to another system fails, it lets you know but never stops. It doesn’t fault. It doesn’t require a secondary service to “watch it”. It just works. Note: There is nothing in there about design patterns, about the perfection of the code and memory management, about logs rolling over, etc, etc. It just works. Good running code

© 2025 Rambli by Greg Thomas. All rights reserved.