Dr. Dobb's Design Blogs

The IT Talent Shortage Debate

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 14:26:00 -0500

Tech employers say good people are hard to find. Job hunters see a broken hiring process. Both sides need to shake their frustration and find new ways to connect.

Agile Certifications Are Actively Destructive

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 11:45:00 -0400

Is it even possible to assess competence in agile development with a test?

Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Yourself

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:52:00 -0400

Honoring women in STEM

Endless Flexibility, The Enemy of Agile

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 17:51:00 -0400

When monolithic systems attempt to be infinitely flexible, unfathomable complexity results and agility becomes impossible.

The Anti Anti Agile Manifesto

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:14:00 -0400

An informed guide to misconceptions of Agile.

CRC: The C Stands for Confusion

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 07:37:00 -0400

Because it is so often abstracted, people don't always make smart choices about selecting and specifying CRCs.

Java's Floating-Point (Im)Precision

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 07:41:00 -0400

Java doesn't store, calculate, or return the exact representation of the actual floating-point value in some cases.

Getting the Point of Points

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 11:02:00 -0400

"Points" were originally a way to talk about effort in a dysfunctional (from an agile-planning perspective) environment that focused on time-based rather than priority-based planning.

There's No Room for Deadlines

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 10:19:00 -0400

Agile thinking must extend way beyond the boundaries of the Engineering Department for it to work at all.

Test-Driven Design

Mon, 05 May 2014 10:00:00 -0400

Testing is valuable, but incrementally developing an optimal architecture as a side effect of testing is priceless.

Antagonism and Agile

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 08:59:00 -0400

Though Robert Martin thinks that he's rebutting my post, I find myself violently agreeing with many of (though not his main) points, so it seems like a little clarification is in order.

Java SE 8 Beyond Lambdas: The Big Picture

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:33:00 -0400

In addition to Lambdas, Java 8 features changes to the way annotations are handled, array processing, VM size, garbage collection, and so much more.

The Agile Holocracy

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:20:00 -0400

Agile is a culture, not a set of practices. It is upper management's job to establish that culture, and then let it work. A holocratic organization is one of the better ways to do that.

You Can't Impose An Agile Process

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:35:00 -0500

To be effective, select your tools and develop your own processes

Scrum's Flawed Notion of Product Owner

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 10:59:00 -0500

Agile processes replace up-front interviews with ongoing interviews. Without an on-site customer, there are no interviews, and you end up with no design. Because the product owner is not the customer, he often won't know the answers to your design questions. You're now building on guesswork rather than facts.

OO as a Prerequisite to Agile

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 18:24:00 -0500

Agile and OO (at least when defined as a model-driven approach to architecture) are intimately connected, and good OO structure is essential if you want true agility.

Scrum != Agile

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 04:53:00 -0500

If what you're doing is Scrum in isolation, it won't work. Scrum requires a much larger corporate culture of agility.

2013 IT Process Success Rate Survey

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 06:04:00 -0500

The goal of this ongoing survey series is to find out what IT professionals are actually doing in practice.

Sometimes Optimizations Cancel Each Other

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:43:00 -0400

Two rights can make a wrong in the software-design world.

Implementing Half Floats in D

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:47:00 -0500

D offers a set of features, the confluence of which enables the creation of user-defined types that work well enough to take the pressure off of adding more built-in types.

Wall Street and the Mismanagement of Software

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:47:00 -0400

How Knight Capital becomes a knight errant when it came to software design and delivery.

Measuring Performance for Analytics, Decision Support, and the Data Warehouse

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:03:00 -0400

The Transaction Processing Council (TPC) produces specifications for benchmarks to compare hardware and software configurations used for applications such as online transaction processing (OLTP) and decision support.

C++11: unique_ptr

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:37:00 -0400

There are a lot of great features in C++11, but unique_ptr stands out in the area of code hygiene. Simply put, this is a magic bullet for dynamically created objects.

100 GB to 30,000 GB: Size, Speed, and Benchmarks

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:43:00 -0400

Performance, data integrity, and ease of use are key characteristics to look for when comparing database systems.

Visual Studio 11: The Early Release

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:23:00 -0400

In this article, I'll show you how a little thing like a lambda can make a big difference in your coding style.