The secret of producingsoftware with the minimum number of bugs at the lowest cost has been known forsome time: structured walkthroughs. While other techniques and technologieshave all had their proponents and successes, nothing has delivered significantimprovements in quality improvement at … Continue reading →

IF memory servers me correctly (and I believe it does), great database administrators have a saying that goes, “Normalize, normalize, normalize.” By which they mean that you should apply at least the first three rules of normalization to your database … Continue reading →

WHEN writers get desperate, they can always fall back on the “unrelated-work-of-art” ploy. What you do is take some book that you’ve been reading and write about how it relates to the real topic. The goal is to say the … Continue reading →

IT’S amusing to read the trade press these days. Netscape, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle would have you believe that they speak for the average desktop computer user. That’s right, Scott McNealy of Sun knows what the average business and home … Continue reading →

I occasionally get invited to present at some of the developer-oriented conferences that are put on over the course of a year. While I don’t get paid for these presentations, it’s a free trip to somewhere interesting, access to some … Continue reading →