Today I want to talk about something that developers don’t talk about too much.  We talk a lot about technical skills – the latest frameworks, algorithms, test strategies, architecture, etc. – but not a lot about the soft skills.  I want to talk about the mindset I have and believe good developers should have.  Not […]

Not too long ago, I blogged about having what I call ‘living documentation’.  This is documentation that stays updated based on the current code.  Today I want to discuss a practical way to do this with a Python example, although it can be applied to other languages. The Typical Python Package Structure In Python, the […]

The first day at a new company is one of the first impressions a developer gets when starting a new job.  Yes, he or she interviewed (most likely on-site, but not necessarily) and got to know people/details about the job.  However, the first day says a lot about a company. Unfortunately, a lot of places […]

Why Vimium? I always strive to be the best I can be in whatever I do.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I am trying to be the best at everything I do (that would be impossible), but I am always competing against myself to make myself better.  I’m always fascinated with how I can make myself […]

The Problem with Documentation I hate software documentation.  Or at least how I often see it done. Maybe you have excellent documentation.  But then lots of code changes happen – maybe even an entirely new architecture – and the documentation goes out of date. Have you ever heard the phrase “No comment is better than […]

An Unexplained Mystery Have you ever had a problem that you did not figure out until years later?  In 2013, I was developing a plugin for the Eclipse IDE that measured TDD-compliance for Python developers.  This was a project for my Master’s degree at Auburn University.  When I ran unit tests against my code, all […]

This is a series where I’m discussing what I’ve learned in Coursera’s machine learning course taught by Andrew Ng by Stanford University.  Why?  See Machine Learning, Nanodegrees, and Bitcoin.  I’m definitely not going into depth, but just briefly summarizing from a 10,000 foot view. This is a continuation of week 2. Installing Octave I use […]

This is a series where I’m discussing what I’ve learned in Coursera’s machine learning course taught by Andrew Ng by Stanford University.  Why?  See Machine Learning, Nanodegrees, and Bitcoin.  I’m definitely not going into depth, but just briefly summarizing from a 10,000 foot view. This is a partial review of week 2. Multivariate Linear Regression […]