When I work on UI design for applications I build at work, I try to make it so that the system won’t allow users to make mistakes. I don’t show fields that aren’t absolutely necessary, or options within those fields that aren’t needed for some important function in the context of what is being done.…
Today is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I wanted to acknowledge this here. Each year, on the morning of 9/11, I pull out my diary from the days immediately before and after and read through it. I still can’t watch the footage on TV. I don’t have anything original to add to all…
Working scientists use logbooks to record their work so that they can (a) reproduce results, and (b) establish priority in discoveries. As a working developer, I use a logbook, too, which also serves two primary purposes: (a) capture what I did during the day (sometimes in order to reproduce things), and (b) as an index…
On Monday we will roll out a software system that my team has been building for the last thirteen months. In nearly 27 years with the company, this is the software that I am most proud of. It is a system that coordinates new hires, people who are changing jobs or transferring locations, and people…
I just completed a demo1 for software that me and my team have been working on for nearly a year. It isn’t quite done yet—we still have a few months of work left, but it feels good to get to the point where you have something to show. Indeed, it’s not that different from getting…
Finally, I have come across what I consider to be the best definition of a project manager that I have ever seen. I have written in the past about how I dread getting asked that question, “What do you do?” because (a) it is hard to describe what a project manager does without (b) making it…
The new Mac Mini has been up and running for 10 days now and I have some initial thoughts. For context and clarity, I bought the newest Mac Mini (M1 2020), which is running the Apple M1 chip. I bought it with 16 GB of memory (way up from the 4 GB I have on…
I did manage to get started tonight, but it was mostly on configuration and design issues: I upgraded my system to PHP 5.1.4 and MySQL 5.0.24. I also upgraded my installation of MediaWiki to 1.7.x (I use MediaWiki for not only developer notes and design documents, but for just about all household related stuff) Once…
Ever since I switched from a PC to a Mac at home, I have been using Booxter to manage my collection of books. Back in the day, I had developed my own, Windows-based, home grown application to manage it, but on the Mac, Booxter seemed the way to go. It served me well for quite…
This is no revelation. But we M$ products at work, and one which I use quite a bit is Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Source Safe. This morning, after compiling an application successfully, Visual Studio went bye-bye silently. No application exception, nothing in the event log. Nada. A reboot didn’t seem to fix the…