Programming

Sorting with Sound

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ August 23, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

via Geek.com – yes, I subscribe to stuff like this in my RSS reader … I thought this was interesting on two levels … The Engineering student within appreciates the differences in sorting techniques (although I think I could speed up that bubble sort …) I also think these videos provide a simple illustration of [...]

Hands-On Project: Offsite Strategy

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 22, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

When I talk about having an “offsite strategy” meeting, I’m looking to get out of the office and have some good, “strategic” conversation over a cup of coffee or a beer. Back when I worked for a software development company, we did our best design work at a hot dog stand in Des Plaines, IL; [...]

Another Take on Enterprise Open Source

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 18, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Today’s best conversation was with Christopher Young, of B2BSX, a startup software exchange where corporate IT departments can buy and sell their development efforts, and make a little cash to offset stressed budgets. It’s an interesting idea, and spawned some ideas in a couple of different directions. Andy Hardy, IT Director Every company I’ve worked [...]

So many XML posts, so little time

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 4, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Over the past few days there have been so many posts regarding Microsoft’s announcement of XML formatted files for Office 12. One of the key reasons that I am working so aggressively towards Eclipse immersion (although not necessarily my next big chunk of work – priorities …) is the view that XML will continue to [...]

Moving to Eclipse I – Magic Bullet?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 30, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Seeking Development Convergence … Over the past few weeks, I’ve almost written an entry about juggling multiple development tools for work and home projects – CSS editor, HTML editor, web site code generation tool, remote terminal sessions to web server, and two or three browser windows, wildly flipping between them all to get even the [...]

Motivating Maintenance Programmers

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 7, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Interesting conversation today with one of my application managers. As we move into the new year, we’re doing some “spring cleaning” of the older projects in our PMO. Two from last summer had languished – efforts to develop simple web front ends for order inquiry and dealer information – and I asked my lead web [...]