Software For Code Reviews For Only $5! A 5-Day Offer
The SmartBear company celebrates the version 5.0 of its product CodeCollaborator and makes a great offer to sell 5 licenses of its lightweight product CodeReviewer for only $5!
This offer will be available for only 5 days: July 13-17, 2009 only.
I was very interested in the offer and made the effort to read a little more about the product. It seems to be very useful if you practice code reviews in your company. And if you don’t – you probably have problems in your code.
For $5 you don’t get the full-featured product CodeCollaborator but its “younger cousin” CodeReviewer, which has quite less features. You can see the differences between the two products here but you can easily see that features that CodeReviewer has are quite satisfying for any team that wants to improve their code writing practices and the price is totally worth it.
Don’t miss this amazing opportunity!
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Filed Under Software Development | Leave a Comment
What Kind Of Programmer Are You?
Long time ago, at the dawn of the computer era there were funny legends about The Real Programmer who writes only in FORTRAN, drinks a lot of coffee and beer and NEVER, I mean NEVER writes comments. Today the things are different and the programming is not that mystery magic it used to be and all bosses respected. Today even the children know how to click on the keys and how to write program code even before they know how to write pothooks in their notebooks.
The same logical process happened to the evaluation of the Real programmer’s qualities. It is based on a scientific ground and there is nothing subjective or accidental anymore. A psychological test have been developed that determines your programmer’s personality. The authors claim that it is based on Myers-Briggs tests and that it is absolutely serious although I found some of the questions very funny.
Krishna Kumar Did An Interview With Me On Software Development
My fellow blogger Krishna Kumar from Thought Clusters asked me a few questions about the situation of the software industry in Bulgaria and my blogging inspirations.
His blog is devoted to project management and he has original ideas about how to manage people. I think he believes that we lack some thinking and understanding for the others and this is why I feel his blog so close to my blogs PM Stories and Stop and Think!. And probably this is the reason why I like his blog so much.
Read the interview here. You may find some food for thought.
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Filed Under Links, Project Management, Software Development | Leave a Comment
Follow The Sun – Tips For Offshore Development
Bas de Baar pointed me to this great advise for offshore distribution of the work process – Follow the sun:
Build in Asia
Design/Review in Europe
Test in South-America
Every day.
Every 24hrs.
Well, I am starting to believe that this is a great way to speed up the process but a small devil in me asks this stupid question:
What if at some point you need to talk with the people from the previous time zone?
Suppose you found something that you don’t understand in their specification or in their code, or it seems to be wrong. You want to discuss the issue with your offshore colleagues but their working day is over and they went home. Now you have to wait until tomorrow.
I think that the time difference is a huge problem in communication and although following the sun seems to be a good idea it is not a panacea and you have to develop a strong process to ensure communication abilities without disturbing the personal life of your staff.
There is one more great article Bas wrote on offshore software development that I highly recommend: 25 Rock Solid Tips to Supervise Offshore Development. Read it and follow those tips – they are really helpful.
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Filed Under Project Management, Software Development | 7 Comments
Walking on Water
I found this great sentence, which belongs to Edward V. Berard and I am eager to share it with you:
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
Thanks to Irina Marudina for this piece of wisdom.
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Filed Under Fun, Software Development | 2 Comments
The Two Types of Programmers
Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror wrote a post called The Two Types of Programmers, which gained a lot of controversial comments. Then he wrote another post trying to explain what he meant in the first one and to bring up the peace but the war has already started. I read them both. I read them many times and I still don’t understand what exactly he meant.
He says that there are two types of programmers – Type 0 (20%) are the people who program for fun. These people live programming, they breathe programming. They use Linux and they contribute to Open Source projects. In other words (although he doesn’t say it), these are the good guys, the smart guys. The other group are Type 1 (80%) – people who practice programming for living. They work from 9 to 5, they use only Microsoft technology and they don’t read the technical news. “They are not stupid”, he says but I believe it is just what he means because the final appeal is to the smart guys to swallow their pride and to hope the stupid guys become smarter.
If you feel that you belong to the Type 1 programmers, the stupid ones, don’t worry – one of the most important characteristics of the 20% group is that they read blogs, especially Jeff’s one. So you just need to read one article of his and you’ll automatically become a member of the elite group.
Sorry Jeff, I don’t buy it!
Recommended Readings: Free e-book downloads
Jeff Atwood of Codding Horror wrote an article the other day called Why Does Software Spoil? where he gave his brilliant thoughts about the feature creep that spoils all software products. I was very impressed because I also have suffered of “feature overdose” and I think I am going to add my comments soon on this topic. Continuing the theme, yesterday Jeff wrote another article, where he recommended the Mark Minasi’s e-book The Software Conspiracy. Here the author examines in great detail the “feature paradox” – new features are used to sell software, but they are also the primary reason that software spoils over time.
You can download the book from its website – The Software Conspiracy.
Filed Under Books, Business Analysis, Death March, Links, Project Management, Software Development | 2 Comments
Software Product Success Stories
Craig Brown of BetterProjects started a meme with the same title and tagged me to participate in it. He was inspired by a Scott Sehlhorst’s post at Tyner Blain.
I thought a long time before deciding to write something about it.
Why is it so difficult for me to write about successful products? Well, mostly because I spent most of my professional life working at project-oriented companies. Most of the projects I participated in were one-time shots and I don’t know what happened to those products – if they were ever used or if they were successful. And I can say that most of the companies operating in Bulgaria are outsourcing companies working this way. It is not their responsibility to care about the product. They only care about the current project – to be delivered on time, within the budget and within the defined scope.
Filed Under Links, Project Management, Software Development | 6 Comments
The Mythical Man-Month Walkthrough
TheServerSide.net started a great new initiative – classic books walkthroughs. Joseph Ottinger is the first author with a review of the first chapter of Fred Brooks’ masterpiece “The Mythical Man-Month”
It is worth it!
Filed Under Books, Project Management, Software Development | 1 Comment
How do you estimate the project’s budget? A new poll
I just want to bring your attention to the new poll I published on the sidebar of my blog. Especially for those who are subscribed to my RSS feed and don’t visit the site.
The question this month is: How do you estimate the project’s budget? My personal observations are that in the software companies in Bulgaria the project managers are not allowed to deal with the budget. The financial estimates are made by the top management and usually are kept in secret from the team, sometimes even from the project manager.
I am very curious if this practice is used elsewhere.
Please, vote! Your opinion matters!
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