The Anthropology of Software

Workflow software should de-emphasize roles 31 Dec 2008 -- Don't sweat the user roles. Workflow software should focus on facilitating the business product by embracing the potential of tracking

Google App Engine is a Micro ISV Dream 14 Apr 2008 -- Google App Engine has a combination of features that just might revolutionize both Internet hosting and software development at the same time

Anonymous Posting is the Backbone of the JOS Forums 21 Mar 2008 -- Joel Spolsky is plain wrong about anonymous posting on his Joel on Software discussion forums; he says it hurts, but it is actually the backbone

The Devil Is In The Integration... Details 27 Feb 2008 -- Integrating software components to work together in an application is the greatest risk, challenge, and maintenance cost in software development

Sorry, Ideas Aren't Worth Much 15 Mar 2007 -- Got an idea so awesome you are afraid to tell anyone for fear they might go off and do it before you?

How Not To Achieve Business Success 15 Mar 2007 -- Perhaps one might achieve success in business better by ignoring the success-mongers

Lessons from the Army Budget Office 15 Feb 2007 -- From my Army Budget Office experience, a budget coordination system's priority should be ease of deployment and workflow flexibility not control

The Market Software Development Paradigm 16 Aug 2006 -- A solution to the large IT (Information Technology) project conundrum addresses how to divide a large project

Rowboat: A Database Design 30 Jul 2006 -- Whitepaper: rowboat is a simple yet robust database design for a versatile, single file, no-install, flex column, peer networked database solution.

Tropical island life for a software developer 27 Apr 2006 -- A software developer moves to Curaçao in the Caribbean for 15 months of shorts and flip flops and tropical island life programming in Curaçao

Where is the Pain? 27 Feb 2006 -- Do you have a product in search of a customer? I'm squirming a bit about whether or not I have fallen in that trap.

Here Is My Idea 31 Jan 2006 -- Column rigidity, version loss, sharing challenges in traditional spreadsheets can be overcome by flexible spreadsheet design and peer to peer workflow

Death March in an Information Technology Project 19 Jan 2006 -- The death march of a large IT (Information Technology) project that spent millions but never delivered a single bit of useable software

Building the Machine That Will Build the Machine 13 Jan 2006 -- A software industry disease exhibited even by very smart software architects is called 'building the machine that will build the machine'

Why Michael Kaplan is the Ideal Dev Blogger 07 Jan 2006 -- Michael Kaplan brings a long active history in the newsgroups to his role as a dev blogger with prolific posting, openness, consistency, and balance

I See Markup, Part 6 - Satisfied Customers 28 Dec 2005 -- I get a lot of great feedback from customers using CMarkup to handle their C++ XML tasks and that renews my drive to keep working on it

I See Markup, Part 5 - Not Chasing Standards 13 Dec 2005 -- CMarkup handles most C++ XML needs but there are choices and tradeoffs in the design and features of the product

I See Markup, Part 4 - Productization 05 Dec 2005 -- CMarkup helped make C++ XML fast and easy, but it was a long road to making it accessible as a product with a convenient site and documentation

I See Markup, Part 3 - Transition To Commercial Product 29 Nov 2005 -- CMarkup worked for our team's C++ XML needs and when I posted it online people started asking to pay for it.

I See Markup, Part 2 - XML Industry Prone to Lack of Productivity 15 Nov 2005 -- CMarkup helped get C++ XML tasks done where the XML industry tendency seemed to be towards piling up requirements and interdependencies

I See Markup, Part 1 - Yet Another Parser Is Born 10 Nov 2005 -- CMarkup was created to handle C++ XML parsing needs with a light footprint and high performance

I Don't Endorse Ill-Formed XML, Part 2 01 Nov 2005 -- In treating ill-formed XML as an exception without a workaround, tools do a disservice to their customers

I Don't Endorse Ill-Formed XML, Part 1 27 Oct 2005 -- ill-formed XML is one of the realities that the loudest talkers in the XML world have lost touch with; charting the most powerful yet realistic course

The Large Software Contract Problem 14 Oct 2005 -- The government would like to approach a large IT project the way they do highway construction, but large software contracting is an emerging art

Anthropologists In Software Design 07 Oct 2005 -- What? Anthropologists in software? Software anthropologists study people to design better software. When you find the x-factor, software sells itself.

Discarded Software #4: Connecting With Users 25 Sep 2005 -- Mountains of expensive custom government software collect dust because the end users actually need to get their jobs done

Discarded Software #3: A Design To Love 22 Sep 2005 -- An emphasis on control and prevention, rather than flexibility and tracking, leads to mountains of software solutions that are unworkable and shelved

Discarded Software #2: Standard Practice Fails 20 Sep 2005 -- Mountains of discarded software developed for the government piles up despite much attention to standard practices and so-called best practices

Discarded Software #1: Disturbing Trend 18 Sep 2005 -- Every year mountains of software developed for the government is shelved, and the government software industry is not learning from its mistakes

Google Earth Rocks! 02 Sep 2005 -- Google Earth arrives in 2005 and brings the new age of free access to global mapping and terrain visualization to a new level.