web developer & system programmer

coder . cl

ramblings and thoughts on programming...


you need skilled people

published: 03-04-2012 / updated: 03-04-2012
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

There is a myth where you do not need skilled people, because the technology that you are using is easy to handle, easy enough to avoid hiring skilled people. But that myth is not real, if you have experience, you know very well that skilled people are who drives the project to the right way. Without skilled people, probably your team will not reach the proper speed and performance to avoid falling in mistakes on any stage of the development process, even if you are using agile methodologies or not.

programmers are not resources

published: 27-03-2012 / updated: 27-03-2012
posted in: development, programming, projects, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

How many times do hear the word resource to refer to some co-worker, or even yourself in your daily routine? A resource strictly is a «source or supply from which benefit is produced». If you are called resource in your daily work, probably you do not have more value for your employer than the server where the web application that you are developing is running. If your employer calls you resource, rather than co-worker or even employee, of course he will use the Spanish Theory to get the maximum benefit from your work.

what do I dislike from IE?

published: 03-02-2012 / updated: 03-02-2012
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

I think that my major school on computing comes from Unix & Linux. Unix and derived operating systems are really cool, they have a lot of data processing tools for the command line and software development. They come at least with one language interpreter called Awk or better suited comes with Perl, so you can easily automate system tasks. So, Unix systems are really more developer friendly, rather than user friendly operating systems. With many tools that are freely available to extend the operating system and make it fit your data processing needs, without too much licensing problems.

the market is killing the programming advocacy

published: 27-12-2011 / updated: 27-12-2011
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

I see many programmers leaving their career as programmers to start a career as project managers. At certain age, they leave his work as programmers to start another stage on their career, but I think that most of them do not get bored of programming, I think that they just leave the programming career because the salary is not the same as project managers. So, along the time and reaching the higher point of a programmer salary, they decide to leave all programming activities. So, you have skilled programmers not doing good programming because their career seems to be truncated by the market driven salary.

the ugly side of project management

published: 10-12-2011 / updated: 10-12-2011
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

The fact that many project managers and account managers are not able to handle milestones because many of them are not able to negotiate their schedules is real as the fact that without C — the language that Dennis Ritchie invented — we cannot have almost anything about the computer technologies that we know today. You as developer must assume that you should be leaded by people that is able to manage the schedule without falling in the need to use overtime and similar stuff, among including more developers into the project and requiring more resources.

programming traps and pitfalls

published: 16-10-2011 / updated: 16-10-2011
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

Programming is a hard activity, it requires concentration, and certain programming paradigms, like functional programming and well done object oriented programming, requires a good knowledge and basis in other areas, like theoretical computing. You cannot do well structured object oriented programming or functional programming without a good basis on algorithms. There is no such technology that allows you to create great programs without that knowledge, and you cannot be good creating software design without that knowledge.

goodbye Dennis Ritchie

published: 15-10-2011 / updated: 15-10-2011
posted in: development, programming, rants, tips
by Daniel Molina Wegener

Seems that many people was concerned about Steve Jobs, he was a CEO, one of the most important contributors to make home computing something feasible, and closer to many people. But nothing about those successful products is possible without the contributions made by Dennis Ritchie. If you have a good knowledge on computing history, Dennis Ritchie was the creator — with Brian Kernigan and Ken Thompson — of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system. Also creator of the Plan 9 operating system — with Rob Pike.