thrawn01.org

Grammar on my terms

The Ambiguous Hour

Nov 10, 2011 - 2 minute read - Comments Development

Since the US observes Daylight Savings; every year we take 1 hour from the spring and give it to the fall. As the old adage goes we spring forward in the summer, and fall back in the winter. When we fall back, which is at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November we introduce the ambiguous hour. This year the ambiguous hour lands on November 6th. The hour is ambiguous because at 1 minute after 2:59 it’s 2:00 AM again. Even tho it was 2:00 AM 1 hour ago….

Standardization

Aug 24, 2011 - 2 minute read - Comments

Standardization is a tool used by companies to make their resource pool more flexible. For Example, if project X needs more bodies to ensure it meets a deadline, management has a larger pool to pull from and divert to the suffering project. The other promise is of reliability and consistent metrics; the idea goes – the more things run and look the same, the better your metrics and repeatability will be.

Mocks and Testing

May 25, 2011 - 3 minute read - Comments

I just spent the last 30 minutes debugging a mock object. I was running unit tests through the debugger and inspecting the objects I thought the code was calling. To my surprise this well-defined well-used object was returning an un-expected result in the tests. Only later did I realize the test wasn’t calling the real object. It was calling a mock, and the test writer had incorrectly defined the mock result. This illustrates why I think isolation testing with mocks can lead to a misplaced sense of code coverage. Lets look at some code so I can explain.

The Future of Web Development and the Cloud

Jul 12, 2010 - 5 minute read - Comments

More people are realizing that beyond the hype, the cloud can be a real game changer. But how that effects each tier of the software stack I think is up for some debate. Deciphering the future path development is something of a mystic art, of which I will attempt to partake.

Reflections on 10 Years of Development

Dec 31, 2008 - 5 minute read - Comments

  1. Anyone can become a star programmer, it just takes some longer than others.

  2. Your keyboard matters, Good typing habits matter.

  3. Be balanced, don’t believe everything you hear or read, including this. Come to your own conclusions, know that nothing is ever black and white. Don’t dismiss the bad ideas, and don’t trust the good ideas.

Old is new again

May 13, 2008 - 1 minute read - Comments

While browsing through some old chat logs I found this little gem brian: hey, please make sure to turn on updatedb in your build script. thrawn01: should be on by default, but I'll check. ** I sent some messages confirming it is on as default on the new boxes ** brian: life is filled with mystery thrawn01: That is just a nice way of saying u were mistaken brian: so, your theory is that someone went to prod4 and sat-svn1 and turned it off?