Despite the press in recent years asserting the software development is always a team activity, there are still individual programmers building software without help from others. I’ve recently had a question from one such individual asking if version control makes sense for a developer working alone. Despite working in teams for years, I also work… Read More »
In my last post, I talked about a quick little project that has grown into experimenting with several new tools/processes. I finally got a reasonable release out on CPAN as SVG::Sparkline version 0.30. This version supports 6 different sparkline types: Area, Bar, Line, RangeArea, RangeBar, and Whisker. It also has better documentation in the form… Read More »
For various reasons, I’ve recently been thinking on the importance of programming play, Those times when we tinker with code without any goal other than making something run on the computer. Sometimes this involves playing with a new language or a feature of an old language that we’ve recently discovered. Unlike projects for work, these… Read More »
I just recently read Valueless Software, written by Chad Fowler from about a year ago. In this article, he describes an approach to practicing music by ignoring the result and focusing on the process. He contends that software people might benefit from a similar approach. I have actually seen this approach used before in C… Read More »
Reading Dave Thomas’s blog on Code Kata pointed to PragDave: MoreKata. I also stumbled across How To Practice on Chad Fowler’s blog. Both of these entries discuss exercises that we can use to master the art of programming. Perhaps surprisingly, they use metaphors and concepts from martial arts and Zen. Those of us who have… Read More »
I’m not quite sure what lead me to this blog entry, but I find PragDave: Code Kata by Dave Thomas to be a very interesting idea. I had never thought of describing coding practice as similar to kata. I did stumble into a similar idea once many years ago. I had just finished reading Software… Read More »