Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Understanding css style rule precedence

CSS style rules have precedence depending on what kind of selectors you have.  For example, a selector on an id has higher precedence than one just on element type.  But it’s more complicated than that.

Here’s a quick read that I found helpful:

(re-post) "The Two Things"

I'm re-posting this article I learned about from The Dev Show podcast:

The Two Things about Computer Programming

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Set goals to work on both strengths and weaknesses

In a one-on-one with my manager some weeks back, it was time to set some goals.  An idea came to mind, based on some religious literature I'd been reading.  I decided to choose two goals to work on: one goal would focus on a weakness, and one goal on a strength (on increasing a talent I already had).

I thought I was a fairly good communicator.  I felt that was a strength--I had been complimented on my communication skills by a previous manager, and I felt fairly confident about my abilities--especially my written abilities.  Once I started working on this with my manager, I realized I had a lot to learn.  As I included him in more of my communication and got some constructive feedback, he helped me see additional ways to improve.  I attended a couple training classes offered by my workplace on emotional awareness and other topics.  I talked to another manager about a couple communication techniques.  I read a couple blog posts I could find via Google. In the end, it turned out I had a lot to learn, and I was left feeling like I hadn't learned all I could.

This was an important lesson for me.  There are plenty of weaknesses any of us can work on.  But in all my efforts to overcome weaknesses, it can be easy to forget to take time to build on my talents, my strengths.  Incidentally, by looking to improve on my strengths, I realized I could learn a lot from those around me, and it was appropriately humbling--humbling in a good way.

God is good to me.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

jQuery tutorial

Even if you think you know jQuery, this tutorial is likely to teach you some tricks.

http://net.tutsplus.com/sessions/jquery-succinctly/

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Alternative Kanban (think outside the box) (re-post)

This post helps one to realize if their idea of kanban is stuck to something too specific.  And it gives new ideas for creating a new kind of kanban board.
http://brodzinski.com/2011/11/alternative-kanban-board.html

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Friday, May 17, 2013

Embrace your Inner Designer

I've always thought good design is an important skill for developers.  Sure, I know about design, and I still could use improvement.

Here's a blog post from my brother, which I found helpful:
http://jaredrobinson.com/blog/openwest-embrace-your-inner-designer/?utm_source=feedly
There's a lot to learn from it.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Testing, "bugs cluster" and the "rumblestrip" heuristics


I thought this sounded like fault injection, and wondered if there might be a parallel in testing
Apparently, one rock band had a book of requirements for setting up their show.  If a seemingly silly requirement was missed, it was a signal that other things might be missed as well.  The requirement: a bowl of m&m’s with brown ones taken out.

I suppose in testing, if we notice one thing is missing, we can often suspect that other details may have been missed as well.  When we notice problems, we can/tend to think two things: that there are probably more bugs (they tend to cluster), and we should see how bad the bug we found can get.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Tips for automated testing (re-post)

The way this writer expresses himself suggests humility, in the Context-Driven sense.  I think it's worth a read.
https://devver.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/tips-for-unit-testing/

Monday, February 25, 2013

Recommended Reading: ScrumButs are the best part of Scrum

http://www.noop.nl/2009/09/scrumbuts-are-the-best-part-of-scrum.html

Here are some excerpts:

"...there are organizations that adapt Scrum for the wrong reasons, making it half-Agile, or even non-Agile... We might call these adaptations negative ScrumButs. They make a team's performance worse.
"But if you do your retrospectives well, they should lead to positive ScrumButs, making the team's performance better, which is great! It is the best part of Scrum! Scrum is a great starting point for many teams, just like XP and Kanban..."