“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery Over the weekend I was doing some research on retrospectives and found a very enlightening powerpoint presentation from the founder of Netflix about the Netflix company values. It’s 127 or so slides, which seems a little long by about 100 slides;…
"Netflix Company Values : Spoken vs. Actual Values of a Business"Author: Aly Chiman
Aly Chiman
In July and August of 2002, the most expensive and far-reaching military exercise in history was launched. Costing nearly $250 billion, it simulated a military leader in the Persian Gulf – one believed to be sponsoring terrorist organizations – that the American forces were assigned to destroy. The Pentagon knew that no enemy would be so foolish as to clash with American forces head to head (as with Desert Storm), and foresaw the next…
"Wargames and the Agile Manifesto"
Just finished reading “The Arms of Krupp”, by William Manchester. It was kind of a project… but I will say 1) It’s very readable, and even made me laugh at points and 2) Is a fascinating view of the rise and fall of Germany through the lens of its most famous arms merchant. The interesting thing was the story of artillery and the ‘big guns’ that Krupp became famous for. The company only became the…
"The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester Book Review"Had someone recently ask me about programming and whether it would make a good career for her. I took a few minutes and put down my thoughts. I think the following are good thoughts for people interested in building a career in programming – be in the Microsoft stack or other areas: Build your own identity and get social: I do think you have to build your own brand as a developer separate from…
"Born to Becoming A Great Programmer"
Of course the above is a complete lie. In a shocking turn of events, developers HATE documentation. (Good developers, that is.) That’s because, 1) it’s tedious and painful, 2) programmers prefer to write code, and 3) comments get so easily out of synch with the code. Unless you can document your code in VS2012 directly and have it truly self-update, it’s just not going to get done, and whatever you DO get done will…
"Why Do Many A Programmer Despise Documentation?"