Many moons ago, I stumbled across a website containing an index of “Flame Warriors.” The Flame Warriors were caricatures of personality archetypes that might be found in your typical early-to-mid 2000s discussion forum. Inspired by that and by different people with different characteristics that I’ve met in various capacities over the years, I decided to…
Welcome Aboard, New Grad I recently answered a question on programmer Stack Exchange, and it got me to thinking. The premise of the question was (paraphrased), “we hired a bunch of entry level people as an investment in tomorrow but we’re not quite sure what to do with them today–what do you think?” The most…
First, I’d like to make a brief aside to re-introduce Amanda Muledy (@eekitsabug) who, in addition to editing and writing, is also an artist. Lest you think that I have a single iota of drawing talent, any sketches that you see as post illustrations are her work, done specifically for the Daedtech blog. Her drawings are certainly…
“No plan survives contact with the enemy” –Helmuth von Moltke the Elder Bureaucracy 101 Let’s set the scene for a moment. You’re a workaday developer in a workman kind of shop. A “waterfall” shop. (For back story on why I put quotes around waterfall, see this post). There is a great show of force when…
Documentation and Training as Failures Some time back, I was listening to someone explain the finer points of various code that he had written when he lamented the lack of documentation and training available for prospective users of this code. I thought to myself rather blithely and flippantly, “why – just write the code so…
