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Hourly Rates are Like Cereals
July 25th, 2013
Most companies and recruiters compare developers based on hourly rates. They’ll hang up before getting to know a developer just because the rate is out of their range. Little do they know of the opportunities and deals that they miss. See, hours mean nothing, because efficiency of a developer is variable, and not just by […]
Compilation of Resume Offenses
July 24th, 2013
It never occurred to me to lie on a resume, but I have seen people do it. Here’s a short compilation of some of these offenses: “Knows PHPUnit” In reality: hasn’t read the documentation yet. “Implemented an API” In reality: witnessed someone implementing an API. “Organizer of a conference” In reality: was assigned a few […]
Don’t Sink With The Others
July 22nd, 2013
My partner and I often help projects where developers get caught in technical challenges for which they don’t have enough skills. They sometimes get caught for months in fancy architectures that they are unable to make work. We get these projects back on track, that is, we get them out of the forest to the […]
Self-Directed Teams: Rubbish or Advantage?
July 9th, 2013
The idea of self-directed teams is not new. It has been used for decades. Why would anyone want this? Does this work for everyone? How is it implemented? Is the traditional hierarchical model bad? Hierarchical model The desire to have self-directed teams come from various frustrations that the traditional model generates. Employees do not like […]
Speed Up Your Database
July 1st, 2013
This presentation was recorded at the Montreal.rb user group. I gave a number of tips to investigate the performance of database queries and to speed them up.
How to Motivate Your Developers
June 26th, 2013
When developers are not motivated, progress is slow and quality is low. This ultimately affects company revenues and can lead to reduced opportunities for all employees. Motivation leads in the opposite direction: wealth and happiness. The first thing to understand about motivation is that it’s internal. We can’t force someone to become motivated, but we can […]
Hiring the Right Skills
June 19th, 2013
There is no such thing as a perfect employee match in programming. If you write a list of technologies in the job description and expect to find a candidate with the all right experiences, you will be strongly disappointed. You could spend months or years searching, while overlooking very good candidates just because they lack […]
Goals, Strategies and Tactics
April 29th, 2013
Many people confuse the three concepts. For a business to grow or for a project to succeed, these need to be well understood. I will use a driving navigation system to explain them. Before you set out, you need a destination, a goal. A goal needs to be measurable, that is, you need a way […]
Define: Functional, Unit and Integration Tests
April 5th, 2013
I have recently read a blog post claiming that functional tests are not “true” tests. The author also claims that unit testing shows you where the problem is occurring, while functional testing simply identifies that a problem exists. This argument is deceptive and the conclusion dangerous. Different kinds of tests are not mutually exclusive. One […]
You Don’t Become a TDD Expert Overnight
March 27th, 2013
Do you want to write unit tests but don’t know where to begin? Don’t panic and follow these steps to ease into the testing business. Practice testing often to achieve best results. Tip: try to test the smallest unit possible, usually a function, rather than a combination of functions. Testing combinations is called integration testing, […]