I’ve recently discovered that I favor blocks over playsets. I’m talking about toys, and of course the canonical example of blocks is Legos. You can build nearly anything with them. They are useful, versatile, and inviting. Now, the term ‘playset’ warrants a bit more explanation...
I’m two weeks shy of six months at Microsoft. When I arrived here I was immediately thrown into the fray on Project Silk . The primary developer on the project was heading into paternity leave. Fortunately, I had read JavaScript: The Good Parts on my flight out to Redmond. (I had no idea that I’d be...
We live in a world where thoughts and concepts are not getting smaller and simpler but rather they are getting larger and more complicated. Software teams in many cases are no longer all crammed into one room or can be fed by 2 boxes of pizza (which is a large systemic issue in my opinion). Teams are...
Chapter XXXVI My time with Blue Spire has officially ended. I have accepted a position with Microsoft on the Patterns & Practices team. My start date is April 18th. Even though I’ve been professionally restless for a while, leaving Blue Spire turned out to be rather emotional for me. Untangling myself...
On March 31, 1998, around 10am, my then-manager Alex and I left the office we shared together and headed over to Electronics Boutique. Alex and I were both developers working for the IT department of an up and coming software company called PC DOCS. In those days, we didn’t have a corporate firewall...