Category: Software development

Internet of Things (IoT) Project-Project Plan

Start with the End in Mind.   Goals Understand the nature of the temperature gradient relative to a heated building with attached enclosed space Notify me when there is a risk of garage stores beverages freezing (and possibly bursting) Notify…

Infrastructure The silent project plan killer

In theory, you get a piece of software and install it and begin using it. That works maybe 30% of the time. Invariably, you run the install and various messages begin to pop up. Maybe you have a permission problem,…

Mobile App development with PhoneGap

A few years ago, I had an idea for an App. At the time, I did some research and felt that Appcelerator was the right way to go. I coded the core parts of the system but began to bog…

Self-serve Backup Configuration Automation Application

While working for a major financial company, I became the development owner of an application to allow the self configuration of application server backups, There were approximately 20,000 servers in this organization and Petabytes of backups occurring nightly There was…

Why I prefer an Agile/Scrum approach to software development

After 30 years of developing software I came to the conclusion years ago that in most cases, an Agile approach to development is superior. The problems with SDLC are several fold. Most are based on deficiencies in the human element… Embarrassment…

Stumbled on a Javascript Bug

Wow,   This is rare. While writing code, I stumbled on a bug in the language. In my application, I’m using the mod operator (%) and I have used it for decades successfully (although not only in JavaScript). So the…

Replacing a 100 Year old Bond Ticker Tape machine

A major financial organization had a problem. It seems that there was a very minor piece of information that is published in their newspaper on a daily basis and the machine for reading it was ancient. The machine was a…

High Performance Outage Tracking Dashboard

This application was for senior managers wanting to monitor the current global status of major incidents… ones significantly impacting a global financial company. It has been my experience that when working with executives, they generally was as little fuss as…