Last week, I spent some time in two Egyptian cities: Alexandria and Cairo. I enjoyed this a lot. The Egyptian people were very friendly and good-natured, and there were some truly fascinating sites to see. Beyond just the obvious trip to the Pyramids, I saw Greco-Roman ruins, an incredible library in Alexandria, forts constructed during…
Announcement Housekeeping I’m back from my vacation, and while I was gone my first Pluralsight course was published and I’m now officially listed as an author. The course is about continuous testing and NCrunch, if you have interest and a Pluralsight subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, I would recommend one, and that’s a…
Technology Progressives vs Conservatives Reconsidered When it comes to our relationship with technology, most people think in terms of the classic struggle between inventors that capture the imagination and laborers that don’t want to be imagination-captured right out of a steady paycheck. I think this is a rather obvious way to consider technology in our…
Convene the High Council Today I’d like to talk about something that I’ve observed on some occasions throughout my career. It sort of builds on the concepts that I’ve touched on in previous writings “How to Keep your Best Programmers” and the Expert Beginner posts, including Bruce Webster’s “Dead Sea Effect.” The phenomenon is an…
In the last few months, I’ve seen a number of tweets and posts decrying or at least cautioning against the use of productivity tools (e.g. CodeRush, ReSharper, and JustCode). The reasoning behind this is is generally some variant of the notion that such tools are more akin to addictive drugs than to sustainable life improvements….
