Software, Silliness and Snow

Seriously about Software:
Joel Spolsky has written many good pieces on software development. This one is essentially saying "whatever you do, don't rewrite code from scratch." One way to renew your codebase is to tick the code regularly and often enough. It takes some time, but every ticking takes you closer to cleaner, more maintainable and extensible code. There's no magical solution, no shortcuts, no silver bullets and sometimes you have to make bigger, riskier refactorings. If you let development debt accumulate, you'll have to pay it back sooner or later. Just hope you can afford it. Ticking means paying the debt in smaller, perhaps weekly installments.

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From the Stern Fun dept:
Software developers are creatures of intellect. Smartness is highest on their values. You can hear that in their witty and wordy remarks (sure to make non-nerds (the word mundies use for these intellect-workers) roll their eyes in desperation), you can see it in their fashion sense and you can sometimes even smell it. Sometimes being smart, or thinking you're smart, makes you cocky. You consider yourself the best judge of how things should be done or code implemented. Asking for feedback is for losers, you think. All of us are imperfect, however. We are imperfect even in what we love or are passionate about. We might not want to admit it, but the software we produce, is never perfect. That's not the problem, managers and customers can't expect you to be perfect, that wouldn't be human. The problem is when you don't check what you've done, when you don't ask for help from your colleagues, because you think you know best, nobody can help you and besides, there's no time.

This picture shows well what happens when you do let somebody else take a look into your source code.

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The Weather:
It's been snowing here in Finland, but take a look at
Neil Gaiman and Cabal, the dog, near Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Clicking takes you to Neil's Journal Blog Thingie which has more pictures)