The Tomes Of Experience

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  Xerxes Battiwalla (Contact)

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  • 10 Ways to Kill Pair Programming « Awkward Coder
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  • Dan Rodney's List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes.

    09/08/10

  • Show all files in the Finder | Software | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld.

    09/01/10

  • VMWare Fusion Shared Folders and Visual Studio Development - Scott C Reynolds - Los Techies : Blogs about software and anything tech!.

    08/28/10

  • Executing Shell Scripts from the OS X Dock? - Stack Overflow.

    08/23/10

  • 
    

    lunchtime!!

    
    

    06/17/10

  • Stone Soup And Boiled Frogs

    An old fable goes (something like):

    Allied soldiers were returning home from the war. They were hungry. They went into a village which was locked down from being so poor and ravaged. The soldiers put on a pot of water and put three stones in it. One villager asked “what is it”? The soldiers cunningly replied “it’s stone soup, but it would be much better with carrots”. The gullible villager ran off and gave up his hard-earned communist rations for the good of the soup. Later, another Red came up and was told by the soldiers “Potatoes give the soup body”, and he too was brainwashed into handing over his commie rations. Eventually all of the village were duped by the infidel soldiers, but shared in the communal flavour that was the soup.

    The moral of the story is that you should 

    Be a Catalyst For Change

    If you need to make large changes, momentum will be slow and there will be little buy-in. Start with something small which piques people’s interest and develop it. One you’ve got it, show people and then say “of course it would be better if we added…”. Given the immediate result of having seen some progress, people will be more receptive to change.

    The flip-side to all of this is the problem that the villagers lost sight of the greater picture. They were all heavily focused on their own little agendas they couldn’t see the forest from the trees.

    Remember the Big Picture

    A frog placed into boiling water will jump out. But a frog placed into cold water and slowly boiled will stay there until he is moist and juicy. The frog doesn’t notice the change. Don’t be like the frog - keep an eye on the big picture and constantly review what’s happening around you - not just what you personally are doing.

    Challenge
    The soldiers progressively deceive the villagers, but the change they catalyse does them all good. OTOH, by deceiving the frog, you’re doing it harm. Can you determine whether you’re making stone soup or frog soup when trying to catalyse change?

    It’s a difficult question to answer because the intention you set out with may not be the result you achieve. The soldiers intent was to make an entire meal, which is a positive outcome from one perspective, but from the other perspective the villagers have probably consumed more rations than they would ordinarily have in order to make the large pot of soup, and therefore have placed themselves in a more difficult position long-term, for a short-term gain. Keeping constant checks on the situation would help to ensure no unnecessary rations went into the soup thereby keeping the process mutually beneficial to all. 

    The Pragmatic Programmer: CH1-3

    05/23/10

  • Software Entropy

    Entropy refers the the amount of disorder in a system. In software systems, we generally mean software rot

    Don’t live with broken windows

    Some software systems have code which stays pristine, others tend to rot and decay. What makes the difference is the attitude by those working on the codebase. Researchers of crime statistics proposed a theory of broken windows which states that one broken window left for any substantial length of time instills in the inhabitants a sense of abandonment. This leads to another window getting broken, littering, graffiti and the sense of abandonment becomes a reality.

    Don’t leave broken windows! If you can’t fix it, then board it up - comment out the offending code, or display a not-implemented message; Take some action to show that you’re on top of the problem.

    When putting out fires, you want (in particular) that you’re careful about how to implement the fix as all it takes is one badly designed piece of code, a poor management decision or something similar to start the decline. It’s too easy for software teams to fall into the mindset of “all the rest of this code is crap, i’ll just follow suit”

    Challenge
    Can you tell when a window first gets broken? What is your reaction? If it was the result of someone else’s decision, or a management edict, what can you do about it?

    A broken window isn’t always apparent. Sometimes a code smell creeps in during a large task where all parts of the system aren’t understood upfront. Driving out the implementation may lead to something functional, but could be complex and difficult to understand. The reaction should be to identify the smell however possible, and discuss the importance of fixing it. If the problem was a result of someone else, perhaps discussing the design approach taken and coming to a mutual understanding of why the design turned out that way, is required. This would at least promote education as to how it could have been done better.

    The Pragmatic Programmer: CH1-2

    05/20/10

  • The Cat Ate My Homework

    A pragmatic programmer takes responsibility for everything they agree to. You *ALWAYS* have the right to not take on the responsibility, but when you do, you should expect to be accountable for the outcome.

    Tip 3: Provide Options, Dont make Lame Excuses 

    Always be honest and direct, admit mistakes and offer solutions. Don’t say something can’t be done; explain what can be done to salvage the situation.

    Talk to yourself (or cat) about how to voice your problems to your boss, and critically analyse what you say to make sure it doesn’t sound like you’re making excuses.

    Challenge
    How do you react when someone - such as a bank teller or clerk comes to you with a lame excuse? What do you think of them and their company as a result?

    A: It reflects poorly on the company and the perceived lack of care or knowledge of the person. Admitting not knowing but actively seeking a solution at least shows genuine interest in trying to achieve the best outcome despite the shortcomings which lead to the situation.

    The Pragmatic Programmer: CH1-1

    05/18/10

  • Use GMail for iPad in Chrome

    Create a shortcut to the following link:

    %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe —app=”https://mail.google.com/mail” —user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; iPhone OS 3_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 Mobile/7B314” —user-data-dir=”%tmp%\gmipad”

    I like the simple interface here…just clean and simple.

    04/14/10

  • Chrome can now save all open tabs to a bookmark, which nicely complements erdinç’s solution. To do this, just right click any tab, and choose “Bookmark all tabs”. It will create a new folder and store all the tabs there, you just need to rename the folder afterwards. I tested this on version 4.0, not sure about older versions.

    How do I save tabs? - Google Chrome Help

    03/09/10

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