So while I figure out the longer term career stuff (conversations are ongoing) I thought I’d take the time to build a couple of apps I’ve had on my mind.  I’m procrastinating by writing, but also I...

One thing I’ve always been guilty of is honesty. That might sound a bit weird, but essentially I am alway happy to be clear at what I’m not good at.  This is often interpreted as imposter syndrome...

I will soon be made redundant from a job I’ve held for 6 years.  Thats the longest I’ve ever been anywhere. The last time I found myself without a job, I was terrified.  How will I keep a roof ove...

In Chad Fowler’s wonderful Passionate Programmer book (which you should buy), theres a chapter called “Be the Worst”. Legendary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny has a stock piece of advice for young ...

Webstock ‘13: Mike Monteiro - How Designers Destroyed the World

Its time I started blogging again. I’ve had several over the years and usually end up deleting them after a while.  I used MovableType, and Ghost and Blosxom and Jekyll and all sorts of other tool...

In the 1990s the “patterns” movement in software was in full flight. The poster child, and many peoples introduction to patterns was the so-called Gang of Four book Design Patterns, published in 19...

I have seen a lot of unit tests in my 10 years as an XP practitioner and coach. I have also had a lot of debates about styles of unit testing. The longest running of these debates is about the role...

Movements arise in context. For people to gather around a shared social, artistic or aesthetic ideal, they usually need some other social ‘norm’ to distinguish themselves from. Movements are as muc...

One of the main tenets of Extreme Programming is that we should strive to produce ‘simple code’. Sometimes code is written simply from the outset, other times code needs to be refactored until it i...