October, 2010

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Restructuring IT: First Steps

The Agile Manager

In this last post in the series on restructuring IT, we'll take a look at some things we can do to get going on a restructure. The place to start is to establish a reason for restructure that everybody inside and outside the organization can understand. Tech is inherently optimistic, and we have short memories. As a result, we don't have very good self awareness.

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The Peril of Busyness

Tim Kadlec

I was reading an excellent post by Jonathan Harris entitled “Our Digital Crisis” and one section in particular jumped out at me. Harris was talking about how our online tools are better for breadth than depth and generally increase noise. We trade self-reflection for busyness, gorging ourselves on it and drowning in it, without recognizing the violence of that busyness, which we perpetrate against ourselves and at our peril.

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Another New Talk: Elements of Design

Sutter's Mill

Elements of Design. At C++ and Beyond next week (and in December) I’ll also be giving a brand-new half-day talk on Elements of Design. I’m passionate about design, in part because it requires specific skills and taste, but most off all because it’s so important for every programmer — whether building a new library or extending one, building a new class or maintaining one, and that covers pretty much all of us.

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Performance Mythbusters

Tim Kadlec

Performance optimization is the Rodney Dangerfield of web development–it “don’t get no respect” In spite of its great importance in the overall user experience, it is all too often pushed aside and treated as an afterthought. In my conversations with designers and developers who don’t optimize, a few of the same myths are constantly brought up.

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C++ and Beyond Session: Lambdas, Lambdas Everywhere

Sutter's Mill

Lambdas, Lambdas Everywhere. We’ll be posting abstracts (summaries) of the C++ and Beyond 2010 sessions over the coming days over at the C&B site. Below is the first, for my talk on “Lambdas, Lambdas Everywhere.” This is a brand new talk. I delivered a ‘sneak peek’ preview of a subset of this material in conjunction with the ISO C++ standards meeting in Switzerland two months ago, but the full talk will be given publicly for the first time at C++ and Beyond.

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The Problem With Happiness

Tim Kadlec

In an interesting post on the Harvard Business Review, Tony Schwartz argues that happiness is overrated : …when we seek happiness as the ultimate state, we’re destined to be disappointed. Absent unhappiness, how would we even recognize it? If we’re fortunate, happiness is a place we visit from time to time rather than inhabit permanently.

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