Node.js is N in a series of O attempts at a Javascript server-side programming model. I’m not qualified to describe it in great detail, having just started to get to know it properly, but I wanted to share some notes on what I’ve learnt so far…

The recent 10 year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto is a good reason to be reflective on where software practices have come from and where they might be going. Plus the Oscar’s are on TV so I have taken refuge in my office and I’ve run out of new books to read…

Experiment! Danger! Beware! As you may have gathered, this blog is turning into an odd collection of writing. This one is certainly no exception, but I do plan to return to something closer to English next time. Good luck!

At this time of year the usual suspects wheel out the prognostications and predictions for the coming year in software trends. It takes a special blend of arrogance and painful vainglorious lack of self-awareness to predict the future in public; you’d have to be a complete fool to do so:

Here’s my predictions for software trends in 2011 – The Easy Ones But It’s New Year’s Eve And I’m Going Out Edition!

Comedy Advisory Alert: I’m an agilist, perhaps not a good one, but agile methods still represent to me the best way forward in doing what we’re paid to do – solve problems using software as best we can. This post is inspired by the odd juxtaposition of comparing what we talk about in our day jobs as if there were like ‘real life’, as in what if the rest of the world tried to pull off what we do and say.

Merry Xmas everyone…

This is from a blog post I wrote in around August 2005. At the time it got linked to a lot, read and laughed at in various degrees and even got reprinted in an industry magazine (but with vital professional edits such as my name being removed, I imagine to save billing complexity). In one of my ‘clear outs’ of online writings around 2008 I trashed the blog, but then late last week someone emailed me the text of the post they had kept. If for nothing else, it provides an odd glimpse back to my early Benjamin Button like computing career where I started at a 400,000 person company wearing a suit and worked my way back to being just me sat here in my Fez and fishing waders. As much as it pains me, and it’s deperately unfashionable skinny jeans terms, I’ve left it unedited – it’s still too long, but there it is…

Warning: This post might not be any good. These are my personal observations of using Ruby and Ruby on Rails after about six weeks of use, which means: (a) In a similar way to a Chemistry degree freshman in their first semester realizes that everything they were ever taught at High School was actually a lie, I await all my mental abstractions to come tumbling down and (b) I am still at the theme park ‘Wow, that ride was Awesome!’ level of objectivity, and this post is being written from the gift shop you must walk through on the way out…