Blog

September 21, 2015

Greg Thomas

Here’s to the Strugglers

I have a lot of respect for people that struggle. You know the type – maybe they are starting something new, something they’ve never done, something they are not sure of – and they jump in… but they stumble and fall, scratch their knees, fall down in front of others, maybe take a shot or two to their pride, maybe they let the easy sure path pass them by. And if they had never struggled, they would have been fine, cool breeze in their hair chilling in the safety in all that they are and all that is around them. Oblivious

September 17, 2015

Greg Thomas

Code like a Comedian

Take your favourite comedian and watch them work their magic on the crowd. Notice anything? When a comedian, a good comedian, makes you laugh it’s only the start of their delivery, they have you laughing, smiling, you’re almost at the peak and then they deliver the one-line zinger that sends you over the edge, you can’t contain the laughter you were holding in, you never thought you’d be one of those people that laugh with a crowd (fear of embarrassment?), but here you are losing it with a complete stranger, tears streaming down your cheeks. You might have been fine with

September 15, 2015

Greg Thomas

What do we really mean by multi-tasking?

Multitasking is one of those buzzwords that never goes out of style – “oh look at him work on two projects at the same time, he is a great multi-tasker” – even though it is completely impossible to actually work on two tangible projects at the same time (unless of course you have your right hand coding on one and your left hand updating reports on the other.) So if not simultaneous project development, then what is it? Without looking in a dictionary, it’s the ability to handle multiple requests at the same time from a variety of sources, prioritize those items,

September 13, 2015

Greg Thomas

Making the Unpopular Call

There are times, when the unpopular call is the only call to make. However, it’s unpopular for a reason, because it most likely causes any of the following; The team wonders why we are making this change? It may work, it may not, you don’t know. It’s probably late in the game and something needs to give. Initially, it causes confusion and fear – why what did we do to get here, surely there is another option? To add to all of this, you are hearing it and feeling it while the call is being made.  It’s not the most popular call,

September 11, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Happy Compiler

CTRL + SHIFT + B is the most satisfactory of keyboard short-cuts. At the end of a long day, a frustrating problem or a late night of coding beyond the zone, the greatest feeling can be summed up in watching your complier scroll through all the dependencies, build them one at a time and generate your masterpiece unto the build server.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes, sometimes the longer it takes, the more satisfying when it completes successfully. You’ve done it, you’ve shipped something, after all that scope creep, refactoring and last minute code reviews, you’ve taken the first step