Friday - October 31, 2008
The Python "Connection Reset By Peer" Problem
Spent several painful days chasing the "Connection Reset by Peer" error. I think I figured out what causes it. And why I don't need to care.
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Author:
Steven Lott
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Sunday - October 05, 2008
Exploratory Programming -- Incremental Development in Python (Revised)
After a bunch of steps involving a bunch of parties, we have 60Mb of .zip files. What now?
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Steven Lott
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Sunday - September 14, 2008
Filesystem Deployment: Some Hand-Wringing
There are two candidate locations on the file system for application components. One location is Python's site-packages directory. The other location is it's own /opt/someApp directory.
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - July 31, 2008
Small Not-For-Profit, Part II
The question of Web-Based Member Management solutions.
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Steven Lott
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Monday - July 28, 2008
Small Not-For-Profit Web Presence -- What to do?
Recently, I talked with some folks at a small not-for-profit ("501(c)") organization. They keep trying to grow the web presence, but they're using a Web 1.0 model. It isn't working well. Here are some suggestions.
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Steven Lott
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Monday - April 28, 2008
Three More False Dichotomies -- Plus a Bonus Misdirection
I love the rhetorical technique of the false dichotomy. It makes everything so simple, neat and wrong. Here are some more that I've collected.
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Steven Lott
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Sunday - April 20, 2008
The Half-Truth About Consultants
On PBS.ORG, Cringley provides a not-very true piece called The Truth About IT Consultants.
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Author:
Steven Lott
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Consulting Failure Agile
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Monday - April 14, 2008
Abuses of Use Cases - a Failure Taxonomy
I've seen another abuse of the use case technique. I think I have the start of a taxonomy of use case abuses.
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Steven Lott
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Monday - March 24, 2008
The Passive-Aggressive Programmer, part II
Some argumentation techniques that effectively prevent progress.
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - February 14, 2008
Why Agile? What's the Point?
TC writes "We consume a significant portion of the overall contract generating a functional specification whose sole use is to serve as the outline for the acceptance test.". And follows with the observation "changing course will require re-education at a level not seen since the Red Guard in the 60s and 70s." What to do?
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Steven Lott
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Monday - February 11, 2008
The Waterfall's Not Working -- Even A Client Said So
A client told us "you did what the contract said, but you didn't solve our problem." Our well-worn waterfall approach doesn't seem to meet the client's needs. What to do?
The real problem with getting away from the waterfall model is the question of risk. What do we do to mitigate risk? If we don't spend a huge amount of time up front analyzing and defining and clarifying everything, how will we manage all the things that could possibly go wrong?
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - November 29, 2007
The Passive-Aggressive Programmer or Why Nothing Gets Done (Revised)
I think I understand what a passive-aggressive response is, and I think I've seen yet another manifestation. Maybe I'm not enough of a "people person", or it could just be that they're intentionally uncommunicative. Regardless of any (possibly inappropriate) labels, some developers have an agenda, won't share it, and seem unproductive. What to do?
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Steven Lott
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Thursday - November 01, 2007
What Goes In the Database? Besides Data, of Course.
I have very strong opinions on the value of triggers and stored procedures. But the question was in the context of referential integrity declarations. Wait, what? When is RI a discretionary part of a data model?
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Steven Lott
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Monday - August 27, 2007
Get this to "Work"
It was a crisis: get this to "work", they said. But, sadly, it was really hard to define "working".
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Steven Lott
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TDD Testing Requirements Deniability
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Sunday - August 05, 2007
Use Cases, Why Cases and The Bentley Test
Dr. Dobb's has an article by Deirdre Blake, in which she interviewed Karl Wiegers on the subject of "Requirements". It's a big topic, and well worth considerable study. The first part of the article suggests some steps we can take to manage these things we call requirements.
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Steven Lott
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Saturday - April 28, 2007
IT Management's Love-Hate Relationship with Tools
See Frank Hayes' "Frankly Speaking" in Computerworld, April 16, 2007, titled "No Fear". He describes the love-hate
relationship between managers, programmers and tools. He describes the
situation nicely, but gets the causes all wrong.
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Thursday - January 04, 2007
Measurable Improvement
The customer wants measurable business
improvements with a fixed budget. However, their Statement of Work limits us to
a few technology changes. I want a Bentley to appear in my driveway. I think
I'm being more realistic.
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Tuesday - September 05, 2006
Faerie Dust™ - Part 2
I've started to identify some other Requests for
Faerie Dust™. See Faerie Dust for an early take on this. Here's
another potential symptom.
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Monday - June 19, 2006
Faerie Dust™
In reviewing Processing Rows in Batches I realized that the
customer wanted a Faerie Dust solution. How do we break the news that we don't
have a supply?
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Friday - April 28, 2006
Notable Failure of Use Cases - Part 4
Can end users write use cases? Should end users
write use cases?
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