Martin Biron, John Scott, and Software Development

Martin Biron was the last player in the National Hockey League to wear #00.  It’s one of my favorite stories because it mixes hockey with the pitfalls of software development. Biron, then a rookie goalie for the Buffalo Sabres, appeared in three games in the 1995-96 season wearing #00, which he had worn during his […]

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Failing Fast is Still Failing

Failing Fast is Still Failing

I love agile development methodologies.  Specifically the ability to fail fast and adapt as necessary. I love cloud services for making failure cheaper and therefore easier.  We can try new things because the risks are lessened. We have the process for failure figured out.  We have the technology for failure figured out.  I think we’ve still […]

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Google Works in Mysterious Ways

I was in a pairing session with one of my teammates earlier today and we stumbled into an interesting little bit of inspiration. Working in Javascript, we were thinking about splitting some values while iterating through an array but that didn’t really feel like the right answer.  Looking for some kind of better solution, my teammate Googled […]

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Full Stack Engineer vs. Web Developer

When I started my professional career at Michigan State University’s Division of University Relations, I was a web developer.  I wrote PHP and ASP and JavaScript and HTML and sliced up images in Photoshop and designed MySQL databases.  I had to do a little bit of server management.  I also trained clients in how to […]

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Retro Portfolio: Pine Ridge Condo Association

The site for the Pine Ridge Condo Association was developed with communication in mind. Prior to the site’s creation, all electronic communication between the neighborhood residents was handled via email, with no single contact list maintained. Members of the Board of Directors had the most accurate lists but, in the interest of privacy, those weren’t […]

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