After spending a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to refactor some particularly hairly (hairy + gnarly) data access code, I thought …
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Redpoint consultants are not just great practitioners - they are also industry thought leaders who derive personal satisfaction from sharing their insights with the larger community. Take a look at what Redpointers have to say...
Yesterday I posted a somewhat snarky comment about how You don't need layers until you need them which may have seemed like a nonsensical thing …
I have a couple of quick notes for any aspiring java architects. Please read them carefully and think about them. Adding layers is BADIn general, …
The 13th Annual CityLIGHTS Illinois Technology Association (ITA) Awards honor top performers in technology whose innovation and success drive growth in Illinois. Last week we …
If you're a hardcore, 10-hours-a-day Rails developer, you already know about DCI. For the rest of you, here's a gentle introduction.
I recently posted about "Git for Dummies" and noticed that commented that they had followed my instructions and had a strange permission issue. Wanting to …
Zappos is a Phenomenon — Going from $0 in 1999 to over $1 Billion in 2008! In “Delivering Happiness: A path to Profits, Passion, and …
With the ascension over the last half-decade of Ruby into the upper echelon of programming languages for business applications, there has been ever-increasing demand for …
Having worked for a couple years now on Rails applications deployed to cloud hosting services like EngineYard and Heroku, a certain set of “rules” have …
I'm currently doing an evaluation of Drools to illustrate the differences and similarities between it and JRules. Due to time constraints, most of this is …
A question came up at work today that I've had to stop and remind myself numerous times and I'm sure other people have to think …
As a longtime Outlook user, I've had the exciting experience of learning how to use Lotus Notes. When first starting to use it I was …
As an older school client/server developer, I've used by VB and Delphi for a few projects in the past. Having seen both tools, they have …
As a developer who works extensively both ruby and java, I'm amazed at the turmoil in the ruby/rails space relative to java. In the last …
Arriving at every event too early, is a waste of time. If it normally takes 15 minutes to drive somewhere, some people will leave 30-45 …
I've often been around (or in the middle) of debates about how message oriented middleware is more scaleable than web services. The problem with this …
I've worked in a variety of companies and I notice an interesting phenomena -- It seems that the capabilities of individual programmers in companies are …
Corey Blake (@CoreyBlake9000) of Round Table Companies (RTC) gratuitously honored my request for an advance copy of Delivering Happiness, the comic book! Based on Tony Hseih’s Delivering Happiness, Joseph …
I recently tried to set up mongoid with a free mongohq account on heroku... This info is accurate as of 28 Feb, 2012. For the …
I've written in the past about change control processes and how they relate to agility. Taking things to the next level, there's a bigger issue …
A question came up the other day when I was showing a colleague the reservation page for the restaurant app I’ve recently written (http://alianosbatavia.com): If …
(From the Iliad, Diomed in giving his counsel on how the Achaeans might capture some intelligence on the Trojan plans): "When two men are together, …
Parting ways with http://alianosbatavia.com has been a lot harder than I thought. Every time I think I’m going to hang it up, I think of …
An anti-pattern is a commonly occurring pattern that is ineffective. There is an architectural anti-pattern I like to call "Through the Looking Glass". This is …
I've found the term "best practices" to typically be a magical incantation that people invoke to use a fictitious third party expert to support their …
Based on the mobile-related work we’ve been doing at Redpoint throughout 2010 and 2011, we’ve believe we have enough data points to predict where many …
.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } Writing Communicative Tests with BDD, Cucumber & Rails on Prezi [[ This is a content …
Great organisations understand that people are not interchangeable cogs, but the wind in their sails. I've struggled to come up with a metaphor that helps …
Dave Logan introduces “Tribal Scrum” in his CBS Money Watch blog and CultureSync Tribal Leadership blog. For a brief introduction to Scrum, see Introduction to Lean, …
What is the difference between a Black Swan, a Flying Green Monkey, and a Unicorn? First off, a Black Swan is an unexpected event that …
WE-Centric Leadership and Tribal Leadership are two distinct bodies of wisdom (BoWs) focused on Organizational Health (high performance cultures and thriving organizations). Each contributes a …
Corey Blake (@CoreyBlake9000) of Round Table Companies (RTC) gratuitously shared a review copy of Paul Glover’s (@glovergroup) WorkQuake book (@WorkQuakeBook) with me. As a follower of Paul Glover’s work in …
A great many people are competent java developers, but have only a vague understanding of the difference between a "public static method", "public method", and …
I don't consider myself a java expert by any measure, but there's a disturbing thing I've noticed. There are a LOT of people who claim …
While touring a college campus with my daughter, one of her prospective cross country team mates said something that gave me pause. In effect, her …
Smart technical people (aka Hackers) have likely dedicated thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of hours of their lives learning, understanding, and generally …
Various “abstract” thoughts on “Dark Leadership”… Welcome your thoughts! Individuals and Collectives: Self, Content, Form, and Context Individually, I am my-self, you are your-self, she …
Matthew Dixon (@CEB_SEC) and Brent Adamson (@brentadamson) of the Corporate Executive Board kindly honored my request for a copy of The Challenger Sale (Amazon) book. …
Israel Gat (@agile_exec) (Cutter Consortium Fellow and Director of the Agile Product & Project Management practice), who is recognized as the architect of the agile …
Jonathan Fields (@jonathanfields) (www.jonathanfields.com) kindly honored my request for a copy of his Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance book (Amazon). Based …
Joseph A. Michelli (@josephmichelli) (The Michelli Experience) kindly honored my request for an advance copy of The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and …
One trend I've noticed with git users is a habit to create a lot of branch and merge activity. The oft-repeated mantra is "branching is …
We live in a convenience society where we need everything quickly and easily. We have an extremely limited amount of time with our customers or …
Aslak Hellesoy and the good people behind Cucumber have realized there was a problem in the Cucumber community. People were using web_steps to build, rather …
No matter what dietary fads are upon us, most of us realize that we need to eat a balanced diet.* Why is it in the …
Fact: putting a skirt on a Gorilla doesn't make it any more graceful Are your agile initiatives Gorillarinas? If you're working in a large organization …
I recently had to debug a problem that was causing a javascript function to return the incorrect value. The code in question was right padding …
In my previous post, I mentioned a bit about the architecture from a project I was working on. In this post I wanted to mention …
In my latest engagement we built an occasionally connected application that required synchronization, concurrency/conflict resolution, and event driven. Taking all these requirements into account we …
I have lived in a lot of places over the years. I have learned with each new place to get out and drive (or better …
