Suppose a young member of the developer role in your next project team approaches to you (member of the architect role in the same project) and said: — I will be coding as part of my role in our project and I am looking for further understanding of how...

After re-reading sections about architecture in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. I am wondering if what the role of a nowadays architect really wants to be is that of...

For those interested, the role of an architect is –also- being discussed in MSDN, here . My first reply next: The answer depends on what do you mean by “architect” (noun) and also by “code” (verb). What seasoned designers talk about when discussing...

For those with critical thinking habits, let’s cogitate about this: If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions like these , won't the good people of my country be guilty of making things worse?” —Donald E. Knuth Could...

This is an update on my internal inquiry: What is software development, art or science? Not surprisingly, the act of programming digital computers is both, art and science. Now I know. Actually, the simple question “what is software development, art...

A belief is —for practical purposes— something that we thought is true. The incredulity or disbelief is a case of belief where we thought of a belief to be false. To doubt about something means to keep the related true-false judgment in suspended or pending...

What could be say about the question: What's coming after X? Where X could be: Object-orientation Software engineering best findings Agile development The context for the question: Asked by blind advocates of X Usually...

A subjectively created list of books about software development grouped in the following categories: Category I: Practitioners sharing their hard-won and thoughtful experiences. Category II: Foundational knowledge. Category I: Practitioners sharing...

To all management teams in our industry: Please consider doing more of this: Increasing the minimum level of knowledge and modern actual practice required from software development sales personnel in order to negotiate projects with customers/users...

Software design skill includes a tendency or habit to know the details about the raw materials our software compositions are made of. The more details you know, the higher the probability of successful designs . Encapsulation by means of information...

Here are some pieces of information about stepping into base class libraries of .NET Framework while debugging: Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code by Shawn Burke Debugging into the .NET Framework Source by James...

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. That is right, that’s why is very important to note who is watching and what is being observed. An assessment about golf playing by Tiger Woods could be more acceptable than one by Albert Einstein no matter how good...

Where the name ‘code’ for a computer program’s source text comes from? What does it mean to say “here is the code for that computer program”? Following are some associations for the word ‘ code ’: As a noun: a coding system used for transmitting...

The concept of paradigm as described by Thomas S. Kuhn is quite profound, I have seen object-oriented software design authors quote him when illustrating the difference between other methods of software design. Yet, it is an illustration taken from another...

When agile development still was not called agile development, there were planning-oriented technicians —professional software design practitioners, that is— in a development project team all the way from the very beginning of the project to the actual...

In a recent presentation, I heard the presenter emphatically referring to someone else code as “crap”; in the same presentation the presenter started to talk about architecture —and like most of the conversations I have heard recently that include the...

In order to an airplane stays in the air is required an strict obedience to some physical laws and principles, for example, the principle of aerodynamic sustentation by which a higher air pressure underneath the structure of the wings happens due to a...

How good for doing business is to sustain conditions where customers trust their providers; one such condition is the ability to explain and predict the outcome of software development such as feature set, cost and, time to deliver. I have observed...

The most influential design and programming mindsets that have shaped my own frame of mind are: Standard C++, Smalltalk and LISP. Many things nowadays considered new on software design have been –in fact- already present on those mindsets since time...

The following paper by and interview with Bjarne Stroustrup have been a very good read: Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006 The Problem with Programming

I have consistently seen best software designers apply critical thinking ideas to their daily work, in particular, to their own design decisions. For example, I saw this: a seasoned software designer talked about why a design could be adequate for...

From time ago , I have wondered what does it really mean when people include the phrase “the real world” in a conversation. Usually they convey it with such a sense of safety so that from that time on, most of the audience seems to know what the speaker...

Sad, very sad is to hear some people saying that good software is equal to late software, even worst is to experiment late and bad software. Robert C. Martin points to a very good way to afford the need to produce software quickly. A well tested and...

While thinking about methods for delivering useful software on the hands of users comes to mind different schools of thought and my conclusion so far is that anyone of them could work, depending exclusively on the skills of the people in the team, of...

Consider the following ECMAScript: var mather=new ActiveXObject("Arithmetic.Math") WScript.Echo(mather.Sum(5,5)) WScript.Echo(mather.Sum(5,5)) Output is: 10 twice. No brainer. Arithmetic.Math could be an in-process (loaded in the same process of...