It’s the People, Stupid!

I'm a career technologist. Building software systems that people find useful (as possibly love) gives me a great thrill. I've spent more than 25 years learning many arcane bits of knowledge that makes it possible for me to contribute to the construction and maintenance of these software constructs. Historically, I have mainly focused on technical skills and … Continue reading It’s the People, Stupid! →

I am a Thought Follower

Some musings on professional software development... I'm a software developer with 20 years of professional experience. I've make all the classic mistakes, and learned a few lessons on the way. I've sought out better ways of creating software that really delights users, creates value and solves problems. I'm continually making use of the experiences and … Continue reading I am a Thought Follower →

Achievement Get!

I've just manage to build and install my first Android app on my new Nexus 5! It wasn't as hard as I thought. Back story: my favourite Android game for a long time was a very simple spider solitaire game by Ken Magic. It's fairly popular on the Play store, but it has a major … Continue reading Achievement Get! →

TIM Group University

I left my job at TIM Group at the end of March, after working there for a bit less than four years. I'm calling it TIM Group University, as my four years there taught me more than I can easily enumerate. Over the years I worked with a huge number of smart people, and felt … Continue reading TIM Group University →

Practical Lightweight Architecture

I recently read Simon Brown's post Getting to a software architecture quickly, which is itself a response to Victor Grgic's post "Think big, act small" - what does it mean in architecture?. I fully recommend Simon and Victor's approach; it's pretty much the same I've been using recently. This post is an expansion of the … Continue reading Practical Lightweight Architecture →

A dark and hideous thing re-emerges

Well. That was a bit longer than expected. I've finally retrieved the slime-covered remnants of my blog, attached bolts to its neck and re-animated it with lightning. For something that I took down for "a few weeks" while I changed hosting providers, it ended up lying pretty much dead in a ditch for nearly 3 … Continue reading A dark and hideous thing re-emerges →

Jamm Farstrider

My partner, Jamm Farstrider, has started blogging! Check out her elegant prose (and learn a thing or two about art) at http://sallysomebody.blogspot.com/.

The Build Monkey Antipattern

Kief Morris has an interesting post on the build monkey antipattern. As someone who is currently working day-in and day-out on build systems, this is a risk that I see (and can hopefully avoid). I would maintain that having a person or team dedicated to improving the build system is not necessarily an antipattern, as long … Continue reading The Build Monkey Antipattern →

New Continuous Integration Meetup in London

The Build Doctor has bravely organised another beer and technology group: The London Continuous Integration, Deployment & Delivery Meetup. The first meeting is tomorrow night (Tuesday 15th); it will be pretty cool to catch up with all the build/CI/deployment monkeys in the area.

Joe on Gradle

There's a video of me talking about Gradle on the youDevise developer blog. Do I really sound like that?