What makes a good software developer? Problem-solving ability? Technical skills? A logical mindset? I would contend it’s laziness.

This may sound weird, perhaps even offensive, but bear with me.

Something I’ve come to realize is that what separates good developers from the bad is not necessarily their skills or knowledge — these are things that can be learned and improved upon — but how they go about their daily work. Bad developers get stuck in routines, doing the same thing over and over and never change how they work, or even question it (“this is how we’ve always done it”).

…

“Yes,” I said, “I understand, not much we can do about it I guess.”

“Yes, I’m really sorry about this, Dean,” said Mr. Petersen, my boss now for the past year. “We’re doing all we can to get someone out there, but the snow’s piling up by the foot. The whole damn city is gridlocked!”

An uncomfortable silence followed. “You’re sure you’ll be alright? It might take until morning.”

“No worries, Mr. Petersen. Wrong night to work late, huh?”

He chuckled on the other end of the line. “Yes, well, you just be careful, ok? …

Arisha was in the zone. This was it. The moment she had worked for all her life was finally here. Soon she would step into the arena and do battle, to become Dominion Earth Champion. Only minutes now.

“For you, mother, sister, brother,” she whispered. She never included father in her mantra, he had no place there.

Eyes closed, she could feel the empty chamber around her, the smell of dust and old blood. It was warm, but not hot. She could hear the muted roar of the crowd beyond the door. The arena awaited.

Reshar would be difficult to…

“If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it” the old adage goes, but when it comes to software engineering at least, this is poor advice — at best.

Anyone who has worked more than a few years in software development knows that one of the hardest sells is convincing your boss to allow time for refactoring and cleaning up the code. On the surface it may seem like a reasonable stance — after all, no project asked for the change, no customer is paying for it — so why would you waste time on it?

Why indeed should you…

Oren looked out across the ruins. The heat seared his face, sweat stung all the little nicks and cuts, but it didn’t bother him much. The spear stuck in his gut however, did. It had to happen sometime he supposed, Keepers rarely died in bed. He only wished there had been more time, just a little bit, for Kara. To watch her grow, come into her own.

He sighed and leaned his head back against the rough stone wall that propped up his dying body. Before him lay a pile of corpses, at least a score. Another score lay spread…

There’s probably no word in software engineering that will get you into a fight faster than the word “Agile”. People love it. People hate it. And these days everyone’s supposed to be using it.

Let me start by saying I have no formal training in Agile, I’m not an Agile coach, and I don’t have any kinds of certification involving Agile. All my knowledge comes from working hands-on with Agile — as described in the Agile Manifesto — in organizations, and studying and learning it on my own. This represents my experience, YMMV.

I ran into Agile as a concept…

The other night I was sitting in my favorite chair, reading, while my kids were playing their favorite games — Fortnite and Roblox respectively if you want to know — and I got to thinking about how MMORPG, or Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, have evolved over the past few decades.

Now, when you say MMORPG most people probably think World Of Warcraft, or if you’re older, late 1990s games like Ultima Online and EverQuest, but the genre stretches way back further than that. There were of course plenty of RPGs that offered some sort of online play, some already…

I’m sitting here in the doctors waiting room. It’s all empty, and I’m suddenly struck by how weird everything is nowadays. One year ago the waiting room would have been full of people. Old people with their old bodies needing maintenance, worried parents with impatient kids, and the occasional middle-ager like myself finding themselves there due to some unforeseen malady. Now that there’s a deadly disease running around, no one’s going to the doctor, unless — like me — they really have to.

I went to the emergency room the other week, and that’s even weirder. Most of them don’t…