Jeremy Hutchings

A while ago I met with an ex Technical Director of a very large game company here in Vancouver. I was working for a local company myself, and we met about a possible project between the two companies. While going over the details we reviewed some legacy systems that they would be working with, the software quality was less than ideal. The statement he made quite a few times that got me thinking was - " all software is messy and usually bad, and that's just the way it is ". To which I instantly thought :   “The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti I'm not sure if this was just his defeatist attitude, or one that had been fostered from coming from a corporate environment that was steeped in technical debt and that usually worked to the lowest common denominator. Though it did make me think - as I don't accept that, at all, so why do so many others? In my experience people who create technology typically a

Craig Buckler's post over on sitepoint.com : Top 10 MySQL Mistakes Made By PHP Developers got me thinking. Are they really mistakes, and are the answers giving people all the options, or is there more that can be added? So this post is and extension and part reply to that blog post. Maybe the 10 points are just things we can improve on, in various ways depending on what it is we're doing. Or is it just shifting processing & logic from one area to another. My caveat would be - that if every beginning PHP dev read the 10 points in Craig's blog and learnt; the dev world would be a better place. I'm thinking beyond the original points. I'll just mirror the 10 points he makes, to give my 2c to the discussion : 1. Using MyISAM rather than InnoDB I mostly agree with the premise of "Oh just use InnoDB", given what Facebook are doing with it, and the level of active development going on, it's a safe bet at the moment. Though technically i

I've been asked various questions lately that all could be summarised as : "What do you prefer, waterfall or agile development, which is best ?" I find these questions much the same as asking the length of a piece of string, or what does the colour blue taste like. Nonsensical and out of context for the most part. Firstly a development method, is just that, a method , a process, an organisational tool. And just like any tool there are suitable and unsuitable places, and ways of using it. Using chisels as screwdrivers spring to mind. Agile (or any other) method isn't a silver bullet to cure all software ills, or by any means a "radical" new way of doing things that will cure all bugs. I think there are lots of different aspects to think about before answering the original question, though I'll go over the following ones. Company culture & history How does the organisation currently produce software, does it even do that in house ? A

I’ve seen quite a few posts recently about interviewing, hiring & job hunting in IT, so I thought I’d share my views. There seems to be quite a divide between companies that think they are the best, want to be, and ones that actually are. The latter are fun, passionate, free flowing places where everyone wants to work. The former seem to just pay lip service to the idea, while demanding their (actual and potential) employees pick up the slack of the organisation. At least the ones wanting to be, know where they are, and are trying ! The flip side is there are a lot of job hunters, who aren’t realistic about their own abilities , or who haven’t really thought about what they are after. I’ve been the interviewee and the interviewer a few times over my career, so like a lot of us I have dealt with both sides of the coin. A lot of time is spent sorting the suitable people from the unsuitable people. Just as there is sorting suitable organisations from unsuitable. I know ho