5 Bad Communication Habits You Must Ditch Now!

Whatever your skill, whatever your trade, whatever your profession you will have to talk to others. At church the other day, our pastor touched up on 5 bad communication habits that we must quit ASAP.

This was very good stuff. I've got to share these with you, so here we go:

DYI SEO - A Few Basic Tips on Search Engine Optimization to Get the Eyeballs Rolling

You want more hits on the content you publish. You want higher click-through rates. You probably want to make sure your site is Optimized for Search Engines. You want SEO - Search Engine Optimization.

Skill Test: Tutoring Business Model

In a previous post, I discussed the use of fictitious situations to use as a discussion platform to "test drive" the skills and thought processes of a potential candidate during an interview. The example below details the aspects of a solution for Private Tutors.

Book Review - "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug

I love to develop software. That is one of the places where I can find my "tov." One aspect of software development that always bothered me was my belief that I could not excel at all areas of the software development life cycle. Let me explain...

Principle vs. Style: On which of these two hills are you willing to die?

In matters of style, flow with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson 

How can a person decide whether or not to have an argument over any topic? Perhaps understanding the difference between "style" and "principle" might give us a clue.

Beginner's C# resources and cheat sheet for the VB.NET developer

My experience as a Microsoft developer goes all the way back to Visual Basic 3. When .NET came out, I naturally transitioned to VB.NET. I received advice, years ago to also learn C# along-side VB, but I did not listen to that advise. In late 2013, I started the transition to C#. Although, the craft is not mastered yet, I am getting much better at it. If you are in the same situation, the following notes highlight tools and references that helped me grow in this area, my hope is that these can assist you in your practice. Feel free to comment and share other tips / tricks / tools that have helped you in your own journey to become a sharper C# developer.

Skill Test: Sushi Restaurant Model

In a previous post, I discussed the use of fictitious situations to use as a discussion platform to "test drive" the skills and thought processes of a potential candidate during an interview. The example below details the aspects of a Sushi-Bar Restaurant Model.

Skill Test: Model of a Library System

In a previous post, I discussed the use of fictitious situations to use as a discussion platform to "test drive" the skills and thought processes of a potential candidate during an interview. The example below details the aspects of a Library System.

Skill Test: Model of a Book Store

In a previous post, I discussed the use of fictitious situations to use as a discussion platform to "test drive" the skills and thought processes of a potential candidate during an interview. The example below details the aspects of a Book Store.

Skill Test: Model of a House

In a previous post, I discussed the use of fictitious situations to use as a discussion platform to "test drive" the skills and thought processes of a potential candidate during an interview. The example below details the aspects of a House.

Your app is mobile, now what?

I'm in a Microsoft Windows development shop. All layers (UI / UI Controllers / Business Layer / Data Access / Database) are built with Microsoft products. We now have some folks working on what's the best technology stack that we should adopt to provide mobile capabilities for some of our apps' features and functionality, but which way is the right one to choose?

Toosl for the job: UML Artifacts, and other Techniques I Always Carry

To understand an existing system or a problem domain one needs to break it apart into smaller pieces. UML Artifacts have been my tool of choice for decomposing a system or understanding a business problem and designing a solution to address the issues that come up.

The UML Artifacts I commonly use in almost daily basis include:

Test the quality of your assumptions as you analyze, design, code, test and deploy/ship your next app.

As you prepare to tackle a new project, you probably make sure all the proverbial IT ducks are in a row.  From skills sets, tools in both hardware and software, environments, connections... the list seems endless at times.  You always make sure to acquire the highest quality of tools and skill sets that your budget can buy. Have you ever considered to inspect the value or the quality of your assumptions as you step into a new project? Failure to keep assumptions in check may lead us to have faith in pursuing a goal of oversimplification, or worse, believing in a myth!

Simple Cost Benefit Analysis for the Software Developer

I took some college courses about finance a few years back. Little did I know that the knowledge I acquired during those sessions was going to become handy during a discussion about the best course of action on a project we were reviewing. In this case, the conversation went something like this:

We need to add functionality "x". If / when we do this our application will perform much better and it would clean up our design. 

But the cost to analyze, design, code, and test would be very expensive. You know development hours are expensive! How about we "throw more hardware" at the problem?

It has got to be cheaper than coding it right. Besides, we do not want to over engineer something if we don't have to. Right?

CSLA 4.0 Implementation - Update #4

CSLA:
The location of choice to learn about this ​technique is Rocky Lohtka's CSLA site. There is also more descriptive information on wikipedia.

CSLA 4.0 Implementation - Update #3

As it is with any new technology, there is a ramp-up time to get proficient at it.
So far, the skill (learning C#) I was expecting to take me a long time to feel "semi-productive" with has taken a lot less time than I had anticipated. The skill (MVVM implementation) I thought was going to be easier to acquire has taken me longer. I'll go through each of the technologies I had to deal with in this journey and come back to this post to add or clarify certain items.

CSLA 4.0 Implementation - Update #2

This post contains a list of resources that can help with the learning curve for adoption of CSLA 4.0. It is based on the items listed on Update #1. I will continue to add resources to this list as I come across them.

Our CSLA 4.0 Implementation - Update #1

During the first third of 2013 I learned a lot about CSLA. Most importantly, during that time I realized how much is there to know about this framework.

1. It is not just an ORM tool. It is a framework for developing Business objects based on an Object Oriented Analysis and Design approach (i.e. object-oriented application vs data-driven application).
2. It has a learning curve, but it is worth the investment in it.
3. It follows 4 "simple" steps:

Story about implementing CSLA in our IT shop

For the past couple of weeks we've been doing a "deep-dive" research on CSLA 4.0 and what it can do.
Just to give a backdrop context, at my place of work, we have implemented a flavor of the CSLA.NET 1.0-ish release (back in the early 2000's).  It has been stripped of many of its original components (i.e. Remoting, DataPortal, among others).  Our CSLA "flavor", has been mainly used as an ORM (object - relational mapper) framework not as a business object framework. Many of the teams consuming the framework have opted for using the CRUD mechanism. Very few take advantage of the n-level undo, the broken rules capabilities, or the use of more complex object graphs and business functionality. We have journeyed through our development cycles under those conditions without rocking the proverbial boat too much during that time.

How-To: Test-drive Software Developer's Skills BEFORE Hiring the Candidate

The Problem...

In a previous post, we listed out some thoughts and considerations about hiring the ideal candidate for a job opening at your IT shop.  In there I made my lame attempt to coin a phrase: Hypothetical Scenario Modeling or HSM for short.  While it is probably a very long shot for this to become a "coin-able" phrase, with this post, I'll attempt to describe how to use the HSM approach.