Viewing profile — elmarschraml

Depends a lot on your situation: Does "CTO" mean you are the tech lead of a small (single team) engineering organization? Then everything written for staff engineers applies. E.g I…

Devastating. Ever since I met him as a young developer, when he was speaking at a local user group, I made it a point to catch any talk he gave at any conference I was at. He was o…

Second the recommendations for "an elegant puzzle" and "the manager's path". Cant believe this one has not been mentioned yet: "Becoming an effective software engineering manager" …

Here is how that press release should have read: First paragraph: Get to the point (layoffs are happening) immediately, and state the concrete reasons why they are necessary. Secon…

Location: Munich, Germany Remote: yes Willing to relocate: no Profile: Engineering Manager Experience: Software engineering background (Java, Web), project management experience, C…

Skills are tactics. Dealing with a recession is about strategy. Most importantly: this is a time to focus on reducing risks, rather than maximizing profit. This is a crappy time to…

Having them do a code review (about 10-15 minutes), i.e. have a short (about 50-80 lines) piece of real code, that I have prepared with plenty of problem, messes, non-idiomatic cod…

Generally, asking opinions rather than specific technical answers. Asking "Do you have experience with technology X" is useless - everybody knows that "yes" is the expected answer.…

- Savings: a few months' living expenses in a readily available cash account. What happens when you suddenly finding yourself having to pay a few hundred or thousand bucks for an e…

Unrelated to the site, but about the patents: How can a specific games console, like the Nintendo 64, be patented? The name of the product, and maybe some brand-specific design ele…

Back in the day, I really enjoyed "Practical C Programming". https://www.amazon.de/Practical-C-Programming-Nutshell-Handb... Short, easy to understand, but not over-simplified, and…

The 4 classic mistakes of programmers in their first "real" job (all made by myself, too, of course): 1) Spending a lot of time building something yourself, where you could have ju…

Listening to podcasts. Perfect for when both your eyes and hands are occoupied, but your brain is bored. To put in in less nerdy terms, cleaning, ironing and other housework, exerc…

Dreamweaver is (or was, back in the day) a good implementation of a category of software that does not really exist any more. Back when the web stated, creating a web page meant mo…

The headphone port is inherently analog - more like power than VGA. With VGA, it made sense to switch to digital ports once the displays went all digital (flatscreens). With VGA, y…

Also mentioned in the article, in case you're not in the U.S.: Last year, the largest private collection of historic apple products has opened as a museum in Prague: http://www.app…

I've bought pretty much every previous generation of kindles, but don't see the point of this one. The voyage is already quite expensive for an ereader, and an upgrade of questiona…

Reading between the lines, it seems to confirm a change in business model. To paraphrase: "Turns out software for running Q&A sites isn't that hot a property, but having access to …

If you're looking for a REPL for Java, try the Groovy shell (comes standard with an install of Groovy). Meant, as the name implies, for Groovy, but since Java is a subset of Groovy…

If you care about Javascript at all, this is a definite insta-buy. Axel is one of those rare people who combine a truly deep knowledge about tech stuff with the ability to speak an…

Rails is faster for a rail trip duration of up to 4 hours (no security, no lines, no checkin, plus you arrive right in the city centre). Which, depending on the route, comes to som…

Thanks, Jon, for all your reviews. It's a sad day to have to look forward to a new OS X release without a Siracusa review. How about a Kickstarter campaign to fund him taking a mon…

Joel on Software is a classic: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Sadly, a few years ago he mostly stopped writing about business and architecture, but the archives from around 2000 to…

XSLT is one of those cases where the idea and the intention is great, but the actual implementation is horrible. I would love to see someone propose a modern alternative to XSLT, t…

Off-topic: Does anybody know why you have to wait for a pedestrian crossing light to turn green at all? If it's usually green for car traffic all the time, and only turns green for…