A friend turned me on to this essay from Peter Norvig entitled Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years . In it the author attacks the idea of the "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" kind of books. They make it look easy to learn to program. Unfortunately...

This view puts me outside the mainstream of the testing community but I feel strongly that test teams need to be divided into those that write the tests (test developers) and those that execute them (testers). Let me be clear up front. I don't mean that...

A promising young executive at IBM was involved in a risky venture that lost $10 million for the company. When Tom Watson Sr., the founder and CEO of IBM, called the executive to his office, the executive tendered his resignation. Watson is reported to...

This post over on TestingReflections brings up an interesting point. Michael answers the question, "What are the useful metrics for software quality" with another question. He asks, in a roundabout fashion, what is it that we value about the software...

A recent article on InfoWorld lays out "The eight secrets that make Apple No. 1." There are many things in the article that I disagree with but there are two that stick out as good advice for software design. The first "secret" is that engineering supports...

In my post, Test Developers Shouldn't Execute Tests , Antony Marcano asked if we actually need test developers or if developers would do. If the more traditional testing tasks are being done by one group and the automation by another, does it even make...

One of our program managers, Richard Fricks, just had a piece posted on the Windows Vista blog talking about microphone arrays . He describes what microphone arrays are, what they are good for, and how Windows Vista enables support for them. If you use...

Ars Technica has a new primer up describing digital audio. A good read if you want to introduce yourself to the concepts.

I was sent a link to this article as a followup to my post about learning to program over a long period of time. The article isn't about programming but rather about comedian Jerry Seinfeld. When he was young and working to be a comic, he had a particular...

This is a follow-on to my post about Managing Mistakes . There is a particular kind of blame I've seen several times and which I feel is especially unwise. The situation is this. A person, we'll call him Fred, is working with another team to get them...

I've really been enjoying listening to Pandora lately. It is a net radio service that builds a "station" for you based on your tastes. You begin by entering a song or an artist you like. It then plays music it thinks is similar. You are allowed to give...

I'm about to head out from my trip to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ( UIUC ). I've enjoyed my trip. I was able to interview 23 bright students. The quality was very high. The school should be proud. I also had a chance to see the places...

If you follow this blog, you'll know that I'm currently working on my Masters in Computer Science through the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I really like the program I'm in. Most classes are real. There are real people meeting on campus 3...