April 2017 – Craig Nicol

Abstractions are scaffolding

April 18, 2017

All software is an abstraction. It’s human-like language with a logical structure to abstract over ill defined business processes, and gates and transistors, and assembly language, and often 7 network layers, and memory management and databases and a myriad of other things that abstractions paper over to help you deliver business value. Abstractions are the … More Abstractions are scaffolding

The manager and maker schedule

April 11, 2017

All technical leads should write code. If you’re not writing code, you’re a manager. And that’s fine. But stop pretending you’re technical. Many Technical Leads or other senior technical staff have a preferred time split between the admin and technical parts of their job, but I don’t always see that in practice. Some technical leads … More The manager and maker schedule

Sense and Respond by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

April 7, 2017

Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously by Jeff Gothelf My rating: 5 of 5 stars Having read Lean UX, I was expecting a good book on how organisations could deliver projects. This book is about much more than that. The authors are coming from a point of … More Sense and Respond by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Demotivated by refactoring

April 4, 2017

Technical debt causes drag. It slows down new features and lengthens the half life of a project (Erik Bernhardsson talks about projects with a code half-life measured in years, but Sandi Metz talks about projects with a half life of 6 weeks on her Chainline mailing list – go sign up now). We all know … More Demotivated by refactoring

Craig Nicol

Mainly programming, with a bit of science thrown in

Month: April 2017

Abstractions are scaffolding

The manager and maker schedule

Sense and Respond by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Demotivated by refactoring