Microsoft Research: Janie Chang: Exploding Software-Engineering Myths:

…there is one point that gives this software-engineering myth buster a great deal of satisfaction.

“I feel that we’ve closed the loop,” Nagappan says. “It started with Conway’s Law, which Brooks cited in The Mythical Man-Month; now, we can show that, yes, the design of the organization building the software system is as crucial as the system itself.”

Bruce Eckel: 5-2-03 Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing

Random Thoughts: TDD is not test-first. TDD is specify-first and test-last.

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Uncle Bob: Speed Kills:

If you want to be a professional, if you want to be a craftsman, then you must not rush. You must keep your code clean. So clean it barely needs comments.

Coding Horror: The Xanadu Dream:

Consider the reality of what’s actually possible, what people can understand, and what us all too human programmers can practically implement. It might not be the Xanadu you dreamed of — heck, it might even suck — but it’ll at least have a fighting chance of existing in reality rather than fantasy.

Dare Obasanjo: Duct Tape Programmers and the Culture of Complexity in Software Projects:

The urge the reduce the complexity of the tools used to solve software problems is one that every software developer should share. However even more important is reducing the complexity of the actual solutions that are delivered to your customers at the end of the day. End users can’t tell if you used complicated C++ techniques like template metaprogramming and mixins to build the application. They can tell when your application fails to solve their actual problems in a straightforward way or is so late to ship due to project delays that they lose interest in waiting for you to solve their problems.

Coworker and friend Kevin Fitzpatrick’s “The Masterless Apprenticeship” new series on learning and craftmanship. Absolutely fantastic.

rallydev: Jean Tabaka: Escalation is Killing Agile – Can We Please Stop It?

plope.com: You’re the Smartest Guy In The Room.. but please, try to restrain yourself.

org-babel: executable source code blocks in org-mode – I need to try this – it sounds amazing.

naked capitalism: Another Lehman Mess: No One Can Run the Software:

I have no idea whether this estimate is still valid, but back in the days when I was working with O’Connor & Associates, the head of technology (and O’Connor had a well run technology operation) said the cost of documenting software (as in having the developers write up what they did in sufficient detail so a third party could maintain the it) was an additional 20%. It was very difficult to get traders to pay for it, ironically not so much for the hard dollar costs, but the fact that IT was resource constrained. The idea that the coders would spend a lot of time on leaving a paper trail, rather than getting to a business center’s urgent need, was a hard sell.

But Lehman illustrates what happens when you do what most places do, and skip documentation.