A few years ago, right about the time I learned my job was to be outsourced, I remember seeing a book in the bookstore titled My Job Went to India. I assumed it was a parody of sorts and decided to resist the urge to pick it up. It wasn’t until I read the introduction [...]

On September 9, 1947, the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator started having problems. The operators opened it up, and discovered a moth between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F. The moth was removed at taped into the log book with the comment “First actual case of bug being found.” When told [...]

Michael Eaton asks: how did you get started in software development, and I’m answering. How old were you when you started programming? I’m another late bloomer. I remember having access to an early edition Macintosh for a short period when I was 13 or so, but it didn’t take. I didn’t really start programming until [...]

I first heard about Girl Geek Dinners a while ago, and thought it sounded like a great idea. I sent an email to the original organizers, and soon heard back. They had also just heard from Liz Morgan, another woman in the Seattle area, and suggested we join forces to organize a local group. And [...]

Today we had a brainstorming meeting with the business analyst for one of our major clients. We pitched a wireframe for a workflow addition to the application. The analyst was excited. This fell in line with a meeting she’d had earlier. The main decision there was to replace a large portion of the UI with [...]

This article on Making Small Commits lead me to think about when to commit and when to branch a code base. Branching is the black art of version control, and anyone who has tried it at least once has probably had the nightmare that arises from having to merge code back in. It’s an art [...]