By J. Timothy King on April 20, 2009
(This is a continuation from part 1 of “Depression and the Software Developer”.) If one of the most powerful weapons against depression is hope, one of its most powerful fuels is hopelessness. I attacked my next job with gusto and enthusiasm. The company had previously outsourced a project to an offshore contractor, and now that […]
Posted in Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer, Personal Improvement, Software Development, Stories, True Stories | Tagged biography, depression, programming, SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Software Development, software engineering, stress |
By J. Timothy King on April 17, 2009
Knowing what I know now, I wonder how I avoided depression for as long as I did: Stress causes depression. Perfectionists are more prone to depression. Isolation reinforces depression. As a software developer, those frequently go along with the job description. Seasonal Affective Disorder has gotten the rap for at least some of the funk, […]
Posted in Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer, Personal Improvement, Software Development, Stories, True Stories | Tagged biography, depression, programming, SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Software Development, software engineering, stress |
By J. Timothy King on March 24, 2009
Software developers have a wonderful explanation for why there are so, so many software bugs. Unfortunately, it’s a highly technical explanation that’s very difficult for the layman to understand. I’ll try to summarize, but be aware that the following is a gross oversimplification. The root problem is that software is complex. And it’s not just […]
Posted in Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer, Software Development, Stories, True Stories | Tagged bugs, programming, quality assurance, software engineering, testing, unit tests
By J. Timothy King on March 21, 2009
One way to deal with poor communication on a software project is simply to ignore the people around you and do what you wanted to do anyhow. Of course, this strategy can backfire, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. But in that case, you probably won’t know enough to notice it backfiring, so […]
Posted in Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer, Humor, Software Development, Stories, True Stories | Tagged communication, Damon/IEC, innovation, programming, software engineering
By J. Timothy King on February 7, 2009
I ran across the video below at the SDLC blog: “Hug a developer… They’re in terrible pain.” This came at an significant time for me, because I too have been working on a project that is quite painful for me. It’s painful, because I saw the disaster coming, because I warned about it, because I […]
Posted in Leaving Normal, Software Development, Stories, True Stories | Tagged consulting, programming, software engineering
By J. Timothy King on February 6, 2009
My daughter has been bugging me to write this book ever since I shared the idea with her. I’d like to get your opinion, though, whether you think it would be worth reading. This book might appeal to you if you enjoy deep characters that challenge your preconceptions, if you are fascinated by the human […]
Posted in Books, Fiction, Stories |
By J. Timothy King on December 5, 2008
This has been simmering on the back burner for a while. I’ve put together a digital, open-ebook (OEB) version of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn. I have tested it, of course, using the Mobipocket Reader for Windows, but I can’t test it with handheld ebook readers that support this format, because I don’t personally have […]
Posted in Books, Novels, Stories |
By J. Timothy King on November 12, 2008
Just discovered this site, www.MaskelyneMagic.com, which contains a series of well-researched articles that Richard Stokes wrote to set forth the true story of Jasper Maskelyne, the so-called war magician. Legend has it that magician Jasper Maskelyne orchestrated a number of grand illusions during World War II, in order to foil the Germans and help the […]
Posted in Novels, Stories, Writing
By J. Timothy King on November 11, 2008
A few weeks ago Seth Godin wrote that a business can be “too small to fail”. That is, while bigger businesses can afford to take risks without going under… A small acting bank would never have invested in tens of thousands of loans that they hadn’t looked at. And a small acting startup wouldn’t hire […]
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, Leaving Normal, Stories, True Stories
By J. Timothy King on September 26, 2008
Just a quick note: The J. Timothy King Web Shop is up and running and taking orders for The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, Volume 1 (with special, introductory pricing through election day, November 4) and 1001 Character Quirks for Writing Fiction: A tool for creating memorable fiction characters (with the ebook version included). And through […]
Posted in Books, Novels, Stories |