LINKBLOG for November 19, 2007

• The Officers vs. Sergeants Syndrome - Max Pool
  


• Steve Eichert - Resist the temptation of "Easy"
  Hah...insightful: ' It's no secret that a lot of software that is developed today is total crap. It's loaded with feature upon feature. It's hard to use, and doesn't do anything that helps the user kick ass '


• The best question asked this week: What, exactly, are you trying to prove? - Reg Braithwaite
  Funny but this can even be an eye-opener: WHY should the customer actually have to know what they want??' Hey, I am not blaming customers. They don’t know what they want because nobody really knows what the optimum finished software looks like before development begins '


• How walkable is your neighborhood? - Joel Spolsky
  Albeit a Fogcreek ad, it's stil a cool reference


• How to Sidestep a Visual Basic Compiler Bug in RTM - Kathleen Dollard
  That is the disadvantage with new releases, the bugs...


• Guidelines for Building RESTful Web Services - Dare Obasanjo
  


• Visual Studio 2008 build version 9.0.21022.08 - Daniel Moth
  It seems to be available ladies and gents (for MSDN subscribers at least). Rumors are all over the place... happy hacking, as they say. Also head over to Daniels place if you want a diff between the VS 2005 and 2008 versions. Btw here's the trial versions of VS2008


• VS2008 and .NET 3.5 Training & Demo Kit - Grant Holliday
  Reference post for once you're finished downloading


• Pair Programming vs. Code Reviews - Jeff Atwood
  ' The advantage of pair programming is the gripping immediacy: It's impossible to ignore the reviewer when he or she is sitting right next to you '
  I've never extensively worked with the technique but it has a great appeal in that you can learn...


• Which practices to implement first? - Ian Cooper
  Ian offers some advice on how to introduce Agile, insisting that the "all-at-once" method can be overwhelming:
  ' We started with build, because there was considerable pain around the existing build and configuration management process '


• Code Generators: Can't live with them, can't live without them - Tom Hollander
  On the two kinds of generators Tom sees: 'one-time accelerator' and 'black magic' types. And why the second category doesn't live up to its promise


• LinkedIn and The Future of Business Networking - Bernard Lunn
  Lots of people I know are also on LinkedIn, same impression as this authors has. Curious whether LinkedIn is *really* gonna make it now. Could be one of the first (AFAIK) really succesful combinations between business and social?


• The Monkey Says: Play It Cool During An Audit - SecurityMonkey
  Ten super tips for how to behave during an official audit:
  ' 10. BE QUIET. Let the auditor talk '