Articles for category: Delivery

June 2, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Prayer of the Demo Gods

On this day, when I must demonstrate my code in front of others with the hopes that they accept all that I have built, I say this prayer in hopes that my code will work flawlessly.  I’ve done many a demo, joked about the demo god prayer, but never have actually figured out what this prayer would be… until now… Let this code compile, In not an hour, but a little while. Allow this application to run with speed and zest, as this will keep users glued to my test. If my code blows up in my face, do it

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 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

April 27, 2016

Greg Thomas

Senior Years but Junior Experience

There is a problem that arises when someone pivots in technology to a new platform, new language, new coding standard, etc. They expect to jump into that same level of position, but with only junior experience behind them. It’s a hard pivot – you’ve spent 10 years doing Oracle Databases and now you are a PHP programmer for 6 months?  Some of these pivots are complimentary where the skills carry over but sometimes they are not – i.e., going from Google Apps to SharePoint App Development.  The only thing you’re really leveraging is your ability to learn and try something new.

April 20, 2016

Greg Thomas

How to Be A Great Software Developer

If you’ve read this blog for awhile then you know (I hope) that the general gist is around how you can become a Great Software Developer.  It’s not easy, it doesn’t happen overnight and there are a lot of steps you need to take to getting in there. In addition, part of this blog is a way for me to get better at writing and sharing these ideas out (bad grammar and all). To this end, I recently wrote a post, combining both worlds on this blog on the topic of – “How to be a Great Software Developer”. Thanks for reading.  

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