Architecture – A Definition I Like
My father was a draftsman by trade. His old school skills were beautiful to behold. “Lettering” was the name given to the printing of labels on drawings done on those old drafting boards with sliding arms that allowed lines to be drawn anywhere. He could letter clearer than a typewriter could type. He took his trade to the classroom in later years and I would often practice drawing stuff out of books that he provided – funny shapes, blocks, etc. It was this stuff that...
Read MoreData Driven Projects
From the dawn of programming time, one of the holy grails that programmers have chased is to avoid hard-coding data values into program code if at all possible. Since most significant applications use some form of database management system, software applications can be developed that are extremely flexible because their behaviour can be changed by manipulating the underlying data, rather than program code. Over the past ten years, I have worked on a ton of projects where application changes...
Read MoreImplied Requirements
Assume you are working on a project for an organization that is launching a new product. The product is similar to an existing group of products the organization already sells. This could be a sporting goods manufacturer that is launching a new line of hockey sticks, a packaged goods company that is adding a new line of cleaning products to its existing stable of cleaning products or a bank offering a new savings account product to their line of existing savings accounts. Assume also that...
Read MoreSavannah
My family and I took a trip to Tybee Island, Georgia recently. What a great week. We enjoyed the beach given the warm spring weather we had, a little golf, a little biking, great food and of course, site-seeing in Savannah. While not old by the standards set by cities elsewhere in the world, Savannah is old when compared with other cities in North America. Founded in 1733, its core is really a neat example of a planned city. The city squares that are basically public parks every few blocks are...
Read MoreThe iPhone as the Modern Day Mustang
My first car was a 68 Mustang. The car was almost twenty years old when I bought it. It had black interior and although it was an automatic, it had a 289 V8 and would really go. I was just out of school, had just gotten my first apartment and I was King. While my buddies were buying new cars, getting company cars or living in big cities and using transit, my car was more than transportation. It was the epitome of cool, even with two decades behind it. I can remember the snarl it made when you...
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