Excellent article on the various technologies used over the years to deliver server-side applications.
Book Review: Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides), Ian Sansom
This is the first book I’ve read by Ian Sansom, and the first in his series of County Guides. The story is set in the 1930s and doesn’t take itself too seriously (unlike Rogue Male, written and set in the 1930s, but a much grimmer tale). Professor Morley recruits a young assistant, Stephen Sefton, to help him tour the counties of England writing a guide to the history of each. Morley is a prodigious writer, publishing a book every 6 weeks at the same time as writing for several papers. Sefton left Cambridge without much of life plan, fought in Spain and found himself penniless back in London – Morley’s job offer coming at just the right time.
The tale is told through the eyes of Sefton and we’re encouraged to admire the knowledge and industry of Professor Morley, whilst privately sniggering like a school boy at his infuriating habits.
Filed under Book Review
Book Review: The Color of Law, Mark Gimenez
This is the first novel by Gimenez and starts the story of Scott Fenney, continued in Accused. It’s worth reading them in the correct order, but it was still a great journey even knowing the outcome.
I found the passage where Scott Fenney’s life as a hotshot lawyer is slowly dismantled particularly vivid. The daughter of his client, Pajamae, is refreshing in that she doesn’t wallow in her misfortune, instead bringing her street smarts and common sense to this high-flying Dallas familiy.
Filed under Book Review
Video: Herb Sutter on Visual Studio cross platform development
Exciting times for C++, you can now target multiple compilers and platforms from a single IDE, Visual Studio.
Filed under C++, Programming, Video
Rosetta’s Philae lander – a real personality
Good news that all is on track for Philae to attempt to land on a comet tomorrow. Even better, it seems to have developed a personality:
For some reason, when the lander is powered up, it switches to the back-up computer briefly before changing to the main one. Accomazzo says that this is just part of the spacecraft’s “personality”.
Sounds like something from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Filed under Musing, Technology
The eight worst predictions in the history of technology
Nice attempt by The Telegraph to pick the top wrong tech predictions – they picked my favourite as the first one:
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers – IBM President Thomas Watson 1943
Of course, given that computers were used for ballistics and code-breaking during wartime, I guess he can be forgiven for missing the home market…
Filed under Technology
Book Review: XO, Jeffery Deaver
This is another from Jeffery Deaver’s series of Kathryn Dance thrillers. Known for her advanced interrogation techniques, Dance meets her match in difficult suspect who’s speech patterns and body language lack the usual tells that give her interviews an edge. She has help from the peerless Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs (Deaver’s other principal characters).
The plot concerns Kayleigh Towne, a young country and western singer, who’s band and family come under attack. The plot has so many twists, it’s hard to remember exactly who is accused of what and why at various points.
Filed under Book Review
ACCU Meet-up: Lies, Damn lies and Estimates, Seb Rose
Seb Rose gave an excellent presentation on the difficulty of providing estimates in the software industry. He debunked some myths, including the shape of Cone of Uncertainty, and recommended several books on the subject for further reading:
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A few other points to take away:
- We are best at estimating small tasks, so split them into 1, 2 or 3 days tasks
- Express estimates as a range with a confidence level – 90% confident that will take between 2-3 weeks
- Communication with stakeholders is most important – assess the impact on upstream and downstream systems
I’ve downloaded the Leprechauns eBook – it’s main intention is to persuade the reader that several views that are taken for granted have not been proven in the literature – such as the Cone of Uncertainty as projects progress (the further into a project, the less error in estimates) and the 10X Programmer (some programmers are ten times more productive).
For what it’s worth, my view on the 10X Programmer issue is that, whilst it’s hard to gather the necessary evidence to compare performance across real world projects, there’s little doubt that some developers add much more value to a project than others. This is true of any human activity – queuing in a coffee shop with a handful of baristas serving while the queue barely moves, it’s usually possible to tell the one person who’s actually getting any work done. On holiday, I watched at a cycle hire place while one guy served at least three times as many families as any other.
It may not be 10X productivity in programming, but a star developer will: eliminate swathes of work by adopting a suitable 3rd party library; consistently check-in code that works (unlike his unproductive colleague who always breaks the build and leaves edge cases untested); produce intuitive user interfaces, reducing the hours of support to train new users.
I have Waltzing with Bears on order – PeopleWare by the same authors was excellent, so looking forward to this one.
Filed under Meetup, Programming, Soft skills, Technology
Heart rhythm-based Password Band
Gigaom reports that Bionym have begun shipping its heart-rhythm-based password band to developers.
A day is nearing where you will be able to open a door or access your laptop based on your unique heart rhythm. Bionym, maker of the Nymi wristband, began shipping units to developers today so they can create applications for the unusual password system. Bionym originally intended to ship the bands to consumers earlier this year, but has been delayed.
There’s a video accompanying the announcement – what really interested me isn’t just the claim that heart-rhythm is individual enough to be used as a secure identifier. It’s also that they see the wrist band being used to interact with devices via gestures – in the video, “Steve” opens his car boot and car door with gestures, and also interacts with the computer in his hotel room via the wrist band:
Whilst 3D body gestures are unlikely to have the granularity of a mouse or stylus, it’s interesting to combine identification and interaction in this way.
Filed under Technology
Japanese broker makes £380 billion fat finger trade
Here is the city reports that a Japanese broker made a massive order by mistake.
The biggest order was for 57% of Toyota – 1.96bn shares of the world’s biggest carmaker
Fortunately he got away with it:
The unidentified broker was able to cancel the trades because they were made through the over-the-counter (OTC) market, which gives traders time to cancel before completion.
Filed under Uncategorized
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