Development
Tradeoffs on buy vs. build
My newest Baseline column is up, talking about the dilemma faced in deciding whether to acquire software or build it yourself: The other day, an IT colleague of mine mentioned a conflict at a corporation where he’s working. The corporation has a mission-critical application deployed across a large number of workstations. The set of corporate […]
The dangers of a successful IT project
My latest Baseline column talks about the risks that follow a successful IT project: But sometimes with projects that really shouldn’t succeed—that are attempting too much, too fast, with too many risks—enough things go right, particularly along the critical paths, enough superhuman effort is made by those involved, so that the project does indeed go […]
New column up: distributed development (part 2)
My latest Baseline column is up, discussing how to make a distributed software development project work. ..bruce..
Remembering Ashton’s Law
The very first class I took when starting my computer science degree from Brigham Young University was CS 131. I forget the course title, but the teacher was Dr. Alan Ashton, a quiet, self-effacing but brilliant professor who would later become very, very rich by developing — along with Bruce Bastian (with whom I shared […]
Latest column up: problems with distributed development
Sorry I haven’t posted much lately; I actually have a few posts in draft status, but I’m currently in Dallas, pouring over hundreds of pages of source code listings (Z8 assembler, anyone?) and haven’t had a chance to finish up any of them. In the meantime, here’s my latest Baseline column on the challenges of […]