November 2011 Archives

The Mythical Man-Month: Wiki and Customer Service

November 26, 2011

Part three in a series. Many of the recommendations Dr. Brooks makes in this work can seem outdated at first glance; however, it does not take much to bring them into today's software development environments. Take the telephone log for example:

"One useful mechanism is a telephone log kept by the architect. In it he records every question and every answer. Each week the logs of the several architects are concatenated, reproduced, and distributed to the users and implementers. While this mechanism is quite informal, it is both quick and comprehensive." (p69)

The Mythical Man-Month: Conceptual Integrity

November 20, 2011

Aside from being a fascinating inside-look at some of the challenges faced by the mainframe programmers of the sixties, The Mythical Man-Month presents many lessons-learned that are no less applicable today. This is the second article in a series exploring some of these lessons, in particular: conceptual integrity.

Rediscovering C++ / Performing SQL Bulk Copy Operations

November 13, 2011

When last I worked with C++, it was while working on my master's thesis ten years ago, using a basic text editor in a Red Hat Linux 5.0 installation. A new task in front of me: replace a Reporting Services report, which was exporting to CSV, with a new solution that will allow me to create multiple files, with max 150,000 records each. The first challenge is speed: with that many records, only bulk copy will be reasonable. The second is splitting the file. I thought about calling BCP from a C# process, because unfortunately managed code only offers bulk loading into a SQL Server database, not from database to file. But C++ is another story, thanks to the Bulk Copy Driver Extensions made available by Microsoft. So, time for a C# developer to brush up on C++, and learn it the Visual Studio way!

Review and Reflection on "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

November 9, 2011

Dr. Brooks is my new… well, I can't think of an appropriate noun. Certainly not a deity. One book does not make him a favorite tech author. Static text cannot make him a mentor. Maybe tech hero?

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This page is an archive of entries from November 2011 listed from newest to oldest.

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