Brent Sordyl's blog » programming

The disappearance of one of the world’s most beloved computer programmers – Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and _why

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:32:14 +0000

Hackety Hack begins by introducing kids to Ruby, _why’s programming language of choice. Then it explains that programming is nothing more than giving a stupid, unthinking computer your commands. You are its boss. It answers to you. And you can make it do nearly anything with simple keystrokes and enough practice.

(Full Story: The disappearance of one of the world’s most beloved computer programmers – Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and _why)

Programmer Competency Matrix

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:49:05 +0000

Note that the knowledge for each level is cumulative; being at level n implies that you also know everything from the levels lower than

(Full Story: Programmer Competency Matrix)

Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:48:57 +0000

- 90% of programming jobs are in creating Line of Business software
- Engineers are hired to create business value, not to program things
- You radically overestimate the average skill of the competition because of the crowd you hang around with
- “Read ad. Send in resume. Go to job interview. Receive offer.” is the exception, not the typical case, for getting employment
- All business decisions are ultimately made by one or a handful of multi-cellular organisms closely related to chimpanzees, not by rules or by algorithms

(Full Story: Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice)

five-essential-phone-screen-questions

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:45:02 +0000

The Five Essential Questions for the first phone-screen with an SDE candidate:
1) Coding. The candidate has to write some simple code, with correct syntax, in C, C++, or Java. 2) OO design. The candidate has to define basic OO concepts, and come up with classes to model a simple problem.3) Scripting and regexes. The candidate has to describe how to find the phone numbers in 50,000 HTML pages. 4) Data structures. The candidate has to demonstrate basic knowledge of the most common data structures.5) Bits and bytes. The candidate has to answer simple questions about bits, bytes, and binary numbers.
Please understand: what I’m looking for here is a total vacuum in one of these areas.

(Full Story: five-essential-phone-screen-questions)

Size is the best predictor of code quality

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:35:53 +0000

A long paper trail of software engineering studies has shown that many internal code metrics (such as methods per class, depth of inheritance tree, coupling among classes etc.) are correlated with external attributes, the most important of which is bugs. What the authors of this paper show is that when they introduce a second variable, namely, the total size of the program, into the statistical analysis and control for it, the correlation between all these code metrics and bugs disappears.

(Full Story: Size is the best predictor of code quality)

Google Prediction API – Google Code

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:49:35 +0000

The Prediction API enables you to make your smart apps even smarter. The API accesses Google’s machine learning algorithms to analyze your historic data and predict likely future outcomes.

(Full Story: Google Prediction API – Google Code)

Microsoft has developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

Brent Sordyl — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:50:28 +0000

Hearing that Windows 8 would use HTML5 and JavaScript for its new immersive applications was, therefore, more than a little disturbing to Windows developers. Such a switch means discarding two decades of knowledge and expertise of Windows development—and countless hours spent learning Microsoft’s latest-and-greatest technology—and perhaps just as importantly, it means discarding rich, capable frameworks and the powerful, enormously popular Visual Studio development environment, in favor of a far more primitive, rudimentary system with substantially inferior tools.

(Full Story: Microsoft has developers horrified about coding for Windows 8)

How to build an Apple Push Notification provider server (tutorial) « Boxed Ice Blog

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 25 May 2011 20:38:53 +0000

1. You connect to the APNS using your unique SSL certificate2. Cycle through the messages you want to send
3. Construct the payload for each message4. Disconnect from APNS

(Full Story: How to build an Apple Push Notification provider server (tutorial) « Boxed Ice Blog)

Leveling Up: Career Advancement for Software Developers

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:14:59 +0000

Pillar 1: Technical CompetencePillar 2: Professional CommunicationPillar 3: Getting Credit for What You Do

(Full Story: Leveling Up: Career Advancement for Software Developers)

Front End Development Guidelines

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:06:03 +0000

(Full Story: Front End Development Guidelines)