The Software Development Diaries

In the modern web 2.0 world environment, people may be forgiven for thinking their application is slow when trying to connect and sync up with the cloud.  Oh hold on it is! Here is how the world is currently split in terms of browser usage… And here is the % still using older IE technologies… [...]

One of the biggest or even the BIGGEST factors in a users experience of any application is responsiveness. Responsiveness is the speed with which information is delivered to you, or the speed at which you the end user can use that information, from your actions.  The later is a  real subtle point, if you give the user [...]

60 images you can’t use… Not as bad as above, but we recently were berated for using a completely unassuming, un-opinion forming, non-offensive image for a certain function…  It just didn’t sit right with the client, once opinion is formulated you just can’t budge someone! What to do, what can we do, what shall we do…  I [...]

So you are sitting their biting your lip for failing, the main man is about to quiz you and work out who to fire… Don’t look inward, everyone is bricking it Don’t pick on someone as soon as Mr Sugar picks on them Don’t choose the person to come into the board room who Mr Alan thinks [...]

Bad is good, let me explain.  The human mind is an amazing risk assessment machine, when expectations are set in your mind,  it will recalculate alternative actions and take them with ease.  Missed the bus? catch the next one, or a different train line or a tram etc, you will still make work.  Project not [...]

Software development has a habit of being, over time, built on existing flaws within the product.  Then when a new problem comes to light, we build again on this new flaw.  The development always progresses by patching. So when developing, no matter how small the project, evaluate it as if you will require a roll back of the [...]

For an hour one can bask in their own Genius, removed from the situation directly, you can just be on the outside looking in… Smugly I know it is heavily edited I appreciate we the watchers are not under the pressure (or so they say) that they are under looking from the top down it is [...]

USB… Remember the days of blowing motherboards from plugging a mouse in while the computer booted. This morning we had to chop and change round a lot of our kit, in the past that would have meant shutting everything down and taking half a day to do it, no more! (I bet some people don’t [...]

The title kind of sums this one up, something that totally annoys us is the big waste paper bin of documents when people only wanted a page… So why can’t the button be defaulted to “current page” only… I know what you are going to say next, well if you flip this argument then… How many people [...]

One of the most interesting aspects of dealing with real time data are real time cock-ups!  You see if you can make an on the spot decision, then of course there is a chance that the decision could be wrong.  The problem companies forget is that when dealing with live data it is not the [...]