December 2009
4 posts
Metaphor, Storytelling, and Agreement in Software...
How many times have you heard something like this?  You know the drill: Stakeholder: “We need to fix sort order.  Let’s make sure that results we can’t show an image for are deprioritized.” Developer: “Can do.” Time passes.  Software is written.  Then: Developer: “I’m finished.  The results without photos are at the end of the list.” ...
Dec 30th
Geek Bucket List
Ok, maybe Bucket List is a bit of a stretch. But if I had oodles of free time I’d do the following geeky things: Lisp.  Really learn it this time.  No.  Really. Smalltalk too. Build and install an active solar system and a solar hot water heater on my house. Do an iPhone app.  Yay, Objective-C! What’s on your list?
Dec 21st
Hiring Internet Talent and the Future of...
As CTO, I seem to be getting the recurring question, “Can you (hotelicopter) find the tech-savvy talent you need in Charlottesville?”  It’s a valid question.  Long gone are the days of Kesmai, EA, Mr. Goodbucks, and the beloved Value America.  These days, we have influx of spooks, a smattering of biotech companies, and in the IT/Internet world… a whole buncha...
Dec 20th
Kicking and Screaming into Programming in the...
I’m not sure if it’s a fine line or a broad one between programming-in-the-small and programming-in-the-large, but at hotelicopter, we’ve definitely stepped over that line.  Along the way, in a very short amount of time (6 months, give or take), we’ve begun moving to the cloud (aws), adopted distributed source code control (git), automated deployment (capistrano),...
Dec 17th