My simple conventions for these popular identifier names. I don’t believe they’re all the same, and should be used under different circumstances.

Frustration mocking static methods, the ridiculous hoops I was forced to jump through, and the clean implementation I was finally able to do with Typemock.

Overview I was having lunch with my friend & colleague last week and we had a disagreement about whose decision it is to make a change when you see something wrong in the client’s software. Mechanic analogy My colleague used an analogy about a mechanic; it was a good one, so I’ll use it here. Let’s say you bring your car in for a $30 oil change, and your mechanic notices a problem with the timing belt.  My colleague suggests, he doesn’t just ignore it, he tells you it’s an emergency must be changed immediately (the emphasis is my friends). Well I agree the mechanic shouldn’t just ignore it, and I was relieved my friend didn’t suggest the mechanic should simply change the timing belt, driving the bill from $30 to $930, but I’m not sure if telling the car owner they must change the timing belt ‘now’ is appropriate either. In my opinion the mechanic should tell the customer what he found, the risk in not fixing it, outline the options to fix it, and the cost & associated risk with each option[1].  Then make a recommendation. It’s the customer’s decision, not the mechanics, and even if the customer makes a foolish decision,...

Seth Godin is wrong I just read Seth Godin’s blog post Where do ideas come from? And in my opinion he completely missed it. Sorry, I think Seth is awesome as do many others, but on this one, I don’t think he really answered the question; where do ideas come from?  Instead, in my opinion, what he wrote was more a list of favourable conditions While I’m no Seth Godin, I’m going to share my understanding of ideas and their source[1]. I hope I don’t need to explain why a post about ideas and creativity is on a programming blog. Ideas come from questions Ideas are answers to those questions. Although it may appear that ideas come out of nowhere while driving to work or zoning out in the shower, they are really answering previously asked questions burning in your subconscious.  There are many conditions which help answers come more easily, but they never come if you don’t have the question in the first place. Questions need to be installed into your subconscious A fleeting question doesn’t quite make it into your subconscious to be answered later.  The question needs to be important enough to be prioritized by your mind. Installations depth comes from...

Yesterday John Bristowe published a list of Developers in Canada You Should Follow on Twitter. I was humbled and honoured to make the list. … actually, I was a little more excited than that, here’s a dramatization …. Watch this video on YouTube … Thanks John … I’ve been dying to use this video in a blog post....