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Carlisms!

"Just because it's running on Oracle, doesn't make it scale to the enterprise" 
- Carl Davis 1998

"What's the difference between a="x" and a=config.getvalue("y")? About 4 staffweeks when the customer changes their mind."
- Carl Davis 1999

"You design in quality...you can't code it in" 
- Carl Davis 1999

"Exactly what is a "drop-in" when your 100% loaded?"
- Carl Davis/Chris Stoner 1997

"I'm flexible, I'm an automation guy"
- Carl Davis 1992

"Can't shake a tree without a VB programmer falling out."
- Carl Davis 1999

In response to Motorola's entry into bio-technology: "Building a better future, by building better people" 
- Kevin Schroedel 1997

Random Thoughts!

Carl's over-engineering addage: The rev 1.0 cars had four wheels and an engine...the 200 Watt CD Changer with surround was added in a later release.

Carl's Web Development Words of Wisdom:
Never place HTML in source code ever! It places the developer into the "display" design and updates...you don't want to go there! I've created template substitution techniques for Perl and Java because I believe strongly in this. Let the graphic and display developers easily change the HTML and you'll avoid a ton of testing and development.

Q: Difference between a Software Engineer and a programmer?
A: About four hundred use cases and class diagrams

The Software Development Project: All projects are managed based on three criteria: schedule, scope, and cost.  Everything costs more than planned, takes twice as long, and ends up with
more features than are really necessary.

Definitions:

"Munge" Code - The process of manipulating a set of source files to create a desired effect. This is typically applied to low level manipulation of small sections of an application. 

"Slurp" Data - Process of analyzing, bulk inserting, or otherwise manipulating large amounts of data typically destined for a database.

"Twiddle Bits" - The process of configuration. An application setup to allow for manipulation of behavior by modifying application setup elements. 

"Spew" - Large scale data dump or process which creates numerous pages of results.

"NMI" - Non-maskable interrupt. It's normally a hardwired interrupt found on CPU's. In my development language, it represents a task that has to be done and grabs top priority regardless of what else is going on.

"Hygiene Factor" - An old management idea (relating to motivation theory).  However, I use it based on the concept of features software needs at a minimum to be useful.

Top Ten:

You Know You've Lost that Techy Feeling...

10) Strategy and vision are no longer used to describe development patterns or a pattern recognition system.

9) Your biggest source control issue revolves around which project plan to update

8) PowerPoint is now your tool of choice for mechanical drawings

7) Your biggest resource optimization problem is insuring that everyone's Outlook calendar is free

6) Amazon has stopped recommending "Uber Java for the L33t" and replaced it with "Paradigm shifting for Dummies"

5) You've finally forgotten the "q!" command in VI…or was that the "ctrl-q"…where's my mouse

4) The mythical man month now means anything can be done with enough people

3) You write an all employee email to see if someone can help you take a tab delineated file and change it to CSV. Special points if the reason was to get it into a spreadsheet

2) You do understand why Dilbert gives his boss such a hard time

1) You no longer cringe, but shake your head in agreement, when someone starts discussing "Driving efficiencies by leveraging our core competencies while eliminating non value add activities in new game changing markets"

Romulan Pet Peeves.

10) People who tail-gate while your cloaked.

9) Having trademark stolen by Federation sports car maker.

8) Wesley...nuff said.

7) Federation vessels using the "cloaked ship" lane.

6) Always being asked "Do you know Spock?" at parties.

5) Core breaches caused by a containment leak, which cannot be shut off because of a frozen injector...and not being able to dump it before it blows your whole ship up...we hate when that happens!

4) Green ships clash with everything.

3) Barbers who give everyone of us the exact same haircut.

2) Lions who won't attack the gladiators...wait that's a Roman pet peeve.

and the number one pet peeve of the Romulan empire:

1) QVC never has cool plaques with Romulans on them.

About

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Carl is the force behind Webcommando. I'm a musician and technologist that leads a team of developers. I really enjoy writing music when the time allows. I also work on iPhone applications when I can. I haven't released anything lately but I still enjoy doing it.