Stacey on Software

stew·ard·ship /ˈsto͞oərdˌSHip/ The job of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or property. "responsible…

London and Chicago Style TDD, A Design Perspective In the field of TDD, two primary schools of thought have emerged, that are often used in…

Back in June, I was playing with structured semantics as a way to interact with an LLM for applications. Today, I watched a video that made…

Introduction Being extraordinary, it's a good feeling. My first electronic enhancement was a calculator. Forget long arithmetic, this was…

Many words have been written about the biases in "AI" training datasets. I last blogged publicly on this topic about 6 years ago, and it…

It's been 4 months since the last post, and I wanted to put out this interstitial post just to cover the time lapse. Since my last post…

You gotta love the "AI" newsfeed these days, fast and furious. So, along the path of writing this 6th instalment, a number of things emerged…

The idea of an Agent is something that has developed over the course of applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to problem solving. You can…

I've been doing a lot of my ML coding in Python. Honestly, for a long time I resisted it, but the tooling moves so fast and is so simple to…

Stepping Up the Complexity Up to this point in the blog series, we've laid a little groundwork, and demonstrated a very simplistic example…

A Simplistic Example Let's start from a simplistic example so that you can get a sense of where I'm thinking. The way I work as a developer…

Thinking over Typing 2.0 As a developer, I've found it possible to describe to ChatGPT my general programming style and have it generate a…

There Is No Agility Without Technical Agility As we wish to adapt continually to an ever-shifting set of stakeholder needs, it is vital that…

Why do we continue to separate the design of a product from its implementation? When we design a product in one place with one group of…

When disciplines in software development are so segregated, those outside a discipline may think only of the final result. Developers type…

When I look back at my career, I’ve been gathering ideas about agile from others since the manifesto. Testing versus checking. Last…

The Spaces Between On teams that are newly cross-functional, or in places with waterfallish reflexes, the coaching opportunities lie in…

Making a Small Pencil Tray I wanted to write this detailed walk-through to try and lay out visually some of the workflow I use on my…

When we use Functional Decomposition to break down efforts on a software development project, we work through how a system needs to work in…

In 1909, Frederick Taylor published a paper entitled The Principles of Scientific Management. At this time in history, things got made by…

Diversity is critical. Look around you, your management, your board, your government, your colleagues. If all you see are white men in…

Think about good application design. You have good cohesion at different layers of abstraction, your code is flexible and adaptive. At the…

This is my fall-back group format when facilitating kata. Timeframe: 60m total - 45-50m exercise, 10-15m retrospective Group Size: 6-1…

When I facilitate a kata session with a group of developers, sometimes I like to mix it up a little. If the room feels like it’s getting a…

The Problem Go find any "learn X in 21 days", “X boot camp” training material and look at how it treats Technology X. Go to the Angular or…

I was talking to a colleague yesterday, smart guy, basically been focusing on systems level architecture and is maneuvering his employer in…

In the beginning, teams tend to be able to deliver working software with little friction. In fact, developers tend to love “green field…

This past weekend, I took part in the PTBOGameJam03 event in Peterborough, Ontario, an event that has steadily grown since August 2016. In…

I drew this picture to illustrate a few ideas, and it’s long overdue for an explanation beyond the few folks at whom I’ve stood in front of…

I started wearing glasses a few years ago, entering in to that cycle of a new prescription every few years to renew my focus. Thinking about…

The Past Software development today is very different than 10 years ago, and worlds apart from what it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago, we…

What’s your job title? What does it say about you? What doesn’t it say about you? We are human beings, doing what we can with the tools we…

Popular media loves to talk about "artificial intelligence" these days. It is a hot topic, one riddled with misunderstanding. Artificial…

Our friends who live down the road from us, always have such a beautiful garden and take amazing care of their animals. The way they've…

So, I've been lurking around various places in the devops world over the years, and lately I've been cruising job postings related to it. I…

Lately, I’ve been exposed to some commercial coaching practices that push the idea of “likability”, they seem to imply that if you develop…

We have built, unwittingly, a fundamentally flawed environment for delivering software. Incapable of dealing with bugs and viruses…

I see a lot of misunderstanding around doing code kata in the work that I do. Just this week, I had a conversation with my apprentice about…

I've been coaching other teams for over a year now (I spent 15 years coaching my own teams), but I still have a small software development…

This weekend I attended a "hackathon" and was surrounded by folks who didn't really understand the word hacker. They struggled to get…

Oh the tears. When holding hands with my love went from a simple thing we thought nothing of, to an act of defiance, playing hide and seek…

So, this hit my newswires today: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331144-500-ai-learns-to-write-its-own-code-by-stealing-from-other…

I believe we are experiencing a diversity crisis in this field. Too few voices and life perspectives shaping the devices and software we use…

More than occasionally, I get asked, "How can I learn programming as a beginner?" I have many thoughts on this, and here is just one of them…

More than occasionally, I get asked, "How can I learn programming as a beginner?" I have many thoughts on this, and here is just one of them…

When I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of friends. I had a small circle of friends in high school, and through this small circle of…

So, how much of a part do your feelings play in how you write software? Feelings are important. Feelings are your "spidey sense", your…

The Stable Dependencies Principle (link on C2 - wiki.c2.com/?StableDependenciesPrinciple) is often expressed as a principle applying between…

I have found a new thing. A test culture so pervasive and intrinsic that they want to test  everything . So much so that they have chosen an…

Lots of folks have been complaining lately about 2016. Certainly, as one friend of mine pointed out, as movies and celebrities have become…

There was once a family of beavers who lived in the forest in a quiet valley. They had found a stream and made their home there, a lovely…

I've seen some thoughts floating around today around what kind of mix of generalists or specialists should you have on an agile team. It…

In 2011, Daniel Kahneman launched a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. It summarized decades of research and presented one core thesis…

    I had an exchange with a colleague last night, and it really pushed me back into this gear. Realizing I haven't published these kinds of…

The past year has been exhausting. I've never felt so much like a hamster on a wheel. This year will mark 8 years into my transition,…

If you require project accountability to funders, for grants or tax refunds, you need lightweight processes that integrate with your…

So, you get it. Technical debt is bad. So what do you do about it when you have it? First step is probably to try and avoid digging yourself…

It is so easy to sweep things under the rug. I’ll fix that comment later. One day, I’ll need to refactor this. Oooo this code is stinky, no…

When you've done a code kata many times, it helps to find new ways to increase the level of difficulty of the kata. We often introduce…

There is a particular class of problem, a Wicked Problem , that denies solution. These problems are difficult or impossible to solve due to…

I'm writing this as much for me as I am for you, my fellow netizen. Signing and encrypting email on iOS is a black art. Get your incense and…

Your project is lying to you. That comment that someone wrote way back over that block of code? Yeah, it was relevant a year ago. Today, it…

This past weekend I was at the Software Craftsmanship North America conference (SCNA) hosted by 8th Light in Chicago. This is a wonderful…

In 2009, I wrote about my experience with PMP. Since then, I get posts every month or two from others who are going through their own…

1.  Imagine an end-result in only the coarsest detail Let's face it, we're all human. We can't juggle everything in our heads, and we don't…

Those that know me know that I'm not afraid of change. I'm a big proponent of "strong opinions loosely held". When something makes sense…

I’m writing today with some important personal news. Over the past several years, I have made a number of very positive changes in my life…

We write software today , it's important to always remember this. Often when we are asked to write software, we are typically provided with…

I'm proud to announce that we're releasing one of our newer frameworks into the open-source community - specifically under the Simplified…

We as an industry forgot this for a long time, and I am proud to be part of the movement to bring it back. I hear all the time from people…

My sister was so proud, she knew I wanted an iPad and she really did too, so on her recent trip to the US, she got one and texted me right…

I have to say, I admire Steve Jobs for taking the hard line on so many issues. It isn't easy, and he's sure taking the flack for it these…

Something has been weighing heavy on my mind for a while now. Years, in fact. I didn't realize it however until the past few weeks while…

OK, found another brick wall :) So if you recall, I have a Maven 2 build. I now have discreet API jars isolated for JPA 2, Servlet 3, and…

OK, so some progress has been made. I've abandoned using the Maven dependency indicated by Netbeans 6.8 and the org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes…

Trying to work something out and it just doesn't look possible right now. Since Java EE 6 was officially released earlier this month, I've…

So this month, Java EE 6 was released. So many new capabilities are now part of the baseline stack, it's very cool. After tweeting about how…

It's finally here, Java EE 6 represents another serious step forward in the core Java server technology stack. It's kind of anti-climactic…

Canadian ISPs are trying to make a point to the CRTC. Here's a Boing Boing article , and the CRTC feedback page so that you to can make a…

I was looking for a good way to encrypt data on a portable disk on my Mac, and was surprised at the range of misleading information out on…

Lately, software project estimation has risen to the surface as a discussion topic at Three Wise Men . The flurry of smaller proposals we…

Any organization who wants to survive needs to realize that they need to implement some level of Continuous Improvement. This is a concept…

Since I've been back at TWM and getting involved in the day to day operations again, and I'm back on task to formalize our procedures…

People are inherently bad at making this distinction. We want lots. We don't need so much. I want a chocolate bar. I really don't need it. I…

I read an article (well, it's more of a slide-show) this morning that just set my hair on fire. Now I understand that to many folks in I.T…

In this guide, I'm going to go through how I've configured high-performance web applications in the past using Squid and Apache to front-end…

In following up my "novel" I posted the other day, I found a neat article from Dalhousie magazine published last year that talks about my…

Introduction So, I haven't told a lot of people about this. Truly, it has taken me a year to learn what I know now, and my journey isn't…

You know, as much as Agile gets a bad rap for companies that poorly or inconsistently implement it, I absolutely hate to see Waterfall…

I say again, ?! I have used SSL Explorer for years, it's an incredible piece of software that gives you a simple web console to initiate…

I've been doing a lot of work on my company, Three Wise Men Inc. , lately. Honing down on what makes the business special, getting right…

Today. Today we are better than yesterday, but not as good as we will be tomorrow. Today our tools are better than they were yesterday, but…

So, I recently blogged about my new "No Quotes" policy at Three Wise Men, and I've blogged in the past about the perils of software…

Starting Tuesday, I will no longer issue quotes for software development. I've been doing a lot of thinking about our Software Development…

At Three Wise Men we've just finished off a reasonably large project, and a few things really struck me in the end about the way we operated…

I leased a nice Dell server this year to help stabilize our IT infrastructure at Three Wise Men. With it I purchased "next business day…

Today we finally got our Dell VM server going again. We had lost 2 disks from our 4 disk RAID5 so we needed to reinstall. So I decided to…

I just got the native iPhone app for Wordpress. Wow. I take everything back I said - mobile blogging is now a dream. Even offline drafts. I…

I think blogging from a portable device will have to fall under the category of microblogging,.. Suffice to say this is my first iPhone blog…

Wow, so here's a short one for you. I'm tuning an application to utilize the Hibernate 2nd level cache. The application uses Hibernate…

On my last post, I began dissecting what might be causing JBoss Seam to be "slow" on one of our projects. In this post, I'm going to show…

So, I decided I had had enough of looking at 400-600ms server prep times for Seam pages on a project we're working on. It just didn't seam…

I often see a lot of complaining about the Apache Maven build tool. In fact, sometimes I do a lot of complaining about it myself. The fact…

So I went to the TSOT Rails Project night last night, it was good to see some familiar faces and I enjoyed the presentations. There was some…

I've always lived at the fringe of computing, with a foot in the popular and a foot in the obscure. When I was a kid, I had a Tandy TRS-8…

I've blogged before on the fallacies of software development estimates. I found this posting particularly well thought-out and…

So, an associate of mine is really enjoying programmatic database query criteria, and now it's spilled over onto me :) The use-case that…

This started as a post about how Java EE 5 has improved my experience in writing webservices based applications. However, for the past hour…

OK, so around 2005 we did some projects with WebServices. They were successful, but we wrote a lot more code than we wanted to. We hand…

Saw this post on Boing Boing today. shaking head To-date I haven't had a problem with DRM'd content that I've purchased online (I have…

So my ranting continues. My friend is adamantly refusing to change his Servlet/JSP habits and I'm afraid I have to take it out on everyone…

This post set me off today. Apparently, because I want a modern Java on my Mac, I'm being selfish. Actually more specifically I'm being a…

Apple didn't ship Java 1.6 with OS-X Leopard. I've been hoping for this for months. At least they updated Ruby to 1.8.6.

Yeah, you heard me. I love those sensationalist headlines. I've been frustrated lately trying to bring some associates along in their web…

Life is a learning exercise. I have two contrasting projects on my mind right now that are at different stages of complexity, although they…

Yes, that might be an odd headline for me to make, given that I actually run a software development company. Or is it. I was catching up on…

Have you tried this? I mean really, sat down, tried to make something simple. Not simple for you, simple for others. People always say they…

I recently purchased a new laptop for one of my daughters, it came with Vista. This is the first Vista based computer in the house. Let me…

I've been writing recently, mostly because our ThreeWiseMen.ca website needs an overhaul for content. Three Wise Men is my software…

I was reading this post , which raises some interesting points, but it sidesteps what I believe is the absolutely most important reason…

So today I'm working through some more content management challenges - and hating JavaScript-based WYSIWYG editors. They really really suck…

I was reading this post the other day and thinking about my particular challenges with software developers. Which I believe I have some…

Why are there so many form letters in the world? Pointless advertising inserts? Communicating with customers with a form letter is like…

Again, I'm looking at starting a blog. This is number 3 for me over the past 5 years or so. Typically I end up losing focus, forgetting to…

I spec'd a new project the other day. Nothing new, we do this all the time, probably a few dozen times a year. We went through the usual…