Process - Tag - In a past life…

The HubSpot Coding Challenge and Me

J. Timothy King — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 01:10:53 +0000

I sent a copy of my resume to HubSpot, and one of their talent acquisition people got me on the phone to talk. It sounded like a potentially good fit, and I was invited to take the HubSpot coding challenge.

Which I did.

The Most Powerful Programming Paradigm in the World?

J. Timothy King — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 22:34:35 +0000

Cornell Facebook Camp Hackathon
Photo by Benjamin Golub

I’m not a hackathon kinda guy. I don’t get off on solving hard or novel problems. I don’t believe in contests. I’m not particularly energized by the idea that a whole bunch of us are trying to solve the same problem at once— I do believe in community, and I appreciate being able to interact with other developers, but on a different level than just getting into the same (virtual or physical) room together, eyes to the computer screen.

So why then did I participate in the Dallas/Fort Worth Perl Mongers Winter 2013 Hackathon?

Software Development: a Love-Hate Relationship

J. Timothy King — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:00:46 +0000

Photo © 2011 Dennis Skley CC BY-ND 2.0
Click here for the original photo.

I wasn’t intending to post anything today. But catching up on blog comments, I read a comment thread between Darryl (whom I don’t think I know) and David (whom I do know, in real life), comments on a post about what’s wrong with the software industry.

And I began writing a short follow-up to their comments. And I discovered that I had used up over an hour, and it was turning into a 500-word post of its own– I so miss writing! But I also am discovering that I still love software development, when it’s done right.

Quick and Dirty May Be Dirty, But Is It Quick?

J. Timothy King — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:18:16 +0000

I’ve been meaning for some time to write about how slow “quick and dirty” is, how misnamed the term is, how misguided are the hoards of managers (many of them former and current software developers) who embrace “quick and dirty” as a fast solution to pressing problems, as though it could ever deliver an actual solution.

I’ve been meaning for some time to write this. It took Lidor Wyssocky’s latest blog post to push me into it. And just in case someone out there couldn’t tell you were joking… (You were joking, right?) The sad truth is that “quick and dirty” may be dirty, but it’s never quick, at least not if you actually want to deliver a usable product.

Dead Fish and Other Things People Wear

J. Timothy King — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 20:49:15 +0000

Lidor Wyssocky at The Mindset writes about “The Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome." This reminded me of a talk Tim Lister gave earlier this year at the Boston SPIN. “The problem is that although we know exactly what doesn’t work right and how it should be fixed, most of us will never say anything,” Lidor writes.

When the Best Tool Isn't, and Why a Growing Team Doesn't Care

J. Timothy King — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:00:55 +0000

Kathy Sierra excellent post on When the “best tool for the job”… isn’t misses an important point. It’s not that she missed the point so much as she just didn’t go into it. But I think it deserves going into.

Many software developers become very attached to their favorite programming languages, methodologies, practices, and so forth. Checking the link-backs for my post “Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First” demonstrates this. One commenter on another blog even said he saw no value in reading the whole post, since it was specious and had no redeeming value. I took great joy in that comment, because it means I must be doing something right to push someone’s righteous buttons so accurately. Regardless, would test-first be the right tool for that programmer?

Thirty Days to Better Software

J. Timothy King — Wed, 10 May 2006 12:00:46 +0000

Reflective Improvement is number 2 of Alistair Cockburns 7 properties of successful teams. Of these 7, Alistair says the top 3 are core properties for success. Reflective Improvement is so important, because it gives such a big bang for the buck.

Break Your (Software) Process Addiction

J. Timothy King — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:00:23 +0000

How many times have you heard someone say—or maybe you’ve even said it yourself— “Yeah, it’s a hack. But we don’t have time to do it right.” Frankly, this one goes in the same category as popular rubbish like:

The Intuitiveness of Time-boxed Iterations

J. Timothy King — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:21:00 +0000

It started as a math project for my fourth-grade daughter and turned into a lesson in project management. I flipped a coin 10 times, counted 3 times that it came up heads, and recorded this on a bar chart: the bar labeled “3” on the axis labeled “Number of Heads,” one trial. We repeated the experiment, recording more trials to the chart. Eventually, we colored a familiar bell curve, big in the middle and tapering off to the sides. Each trial, we expected to see 5 heads, and on average, that’s what we got. Sometimes, we got more or fewer, and once we even got none, but mostly we got about 5.