J. Timothy King
Seven Truths of Good Code
What is “good” code? Some define it as “beautiful.” Some equate it with experience. Some with cleverness. Some can’t tell you what it is. Others know it when they see it. For me, “good” means maintainable. Good code, yes, has grace and beauty. But what makes it worthwhile is that it’s easy to work with. […]
Why Leaders Never Assign Blame
Monday, the school nurse called about my daughter. If you’re a parent, I don’t know whether you’ve ever felt what that’s like, the thoughts that race through your mind, the tightness in your chest, the conscious effort to breathe normally. Both of my daughters needed to come home from school. One of them had an […]
The Dr. House Drinking Game
House M.D. is indeed one of the best shows on TV. Like many others, I enjoy watching it. And to increase my enjoyment of the show even more, I started a House Drinking Game. With the help of others, inlcuding Jim “Suldog” Sullivan and Digg user toxicredm, I now present: The Dr. House Drinking Game
Quick and Dirty May Be Dirty, But Is It Quick?
I’ve been meaning for some time to write about how slow “quick and dirty” is, how misnamed the term is, how misguided are the hoards of managers (many of them former and current software developers) who embrace “quick and dirty” as a fast solution to pressing problems, as though it could ever deliver an actual […]
Fix for w3mir With Latest URI.pm
What brought this all on was that one of my computers died. So I updated software on another computer, and discovered I needed a fix. It’s a fix for a recent improvement in a Perl library, URI::file::Base, that coupled with behavior in URI::file::Unix happens to invoke different behavior in URI::URL, which… Basically, w3mir no longer […]
Is Consulting More Stable Than Employment?
It occurred to me several weeks ago that consulting could be more stable than employment. So I asked someone who’s had much more first-hand exposure to the subject than me. I asked consultant Pam Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation and the Get a Life eZine, what makes a consultancy stable.