Category: Business
-
Now available: My interview on “Developer on Fire” about training programmers
I was recently interviewed by Dave Rael for the “Developer on Fire” podcast. That episode has now been released, at http://developeronfire.com/Podcast/Episodes/reuven-lerner-sharing-insight. Enjoy!
-
Announcing: Coaching for technical trainers
What, exactly, do I do for a living? Yes, I’m a programmer — or as I’m supposed to say nowadays, a “full-stack Web developer.” And yes, I’m a lead developer/CTO. And yes, I’m a writer, with two ebooks written (about Python and visiting China), two more on the way, and my monthly Linux Journal column…
-
New ebook: Jewish guide to visiting China
As many people know, I’ve visited China seven times over the last three years, traveling there to give courses in Python and Ruby. I just got back from my most recent trip, and found it to be as fun and exciting as ever. You could say that I’ve gotten a bit obsessed with the country;…
-
How not to write an error message
Users and programmers see error messages very differently. When a user sees an error message, they think, “Oh, no. Something went wrong.” Rarely, in my experience, does the user think to read the error message, or to use it as a clue toward what might have happened. Technology is so opaque, so hard to understand,…
-
“Practice Makes Python” is now available for early-bird purchase
My first ebook, “Practice Makes Python” — containing 50 exercises that will help to sharpen your Python skills — is now available for early-bird purchase! The book is already about 130 pages (and 26,000 words) long, containing about 40 exercises on such subjects as basic data structures, working with files, functional programming, and object-oriented development. But it’s not quite…
-
Book Review: The Undercover Economist Strikes Back
In order to get an undergraduate degree from MIT, at least when I was there, you needed to take a certain number of humanities and social-science courses. This was to stop you from coming out a complete one-dimensional student; the idea was that rounding out your education with knowledge from other fields was good for…
-
The real questions to ask offshore developers
Friends of mine, who are not software developers, have a small, retail Internet business. The original developers created the application in Python, and my friends are looking for a full-stack Web/Python developer to help them. Frustrated with their inability to find someone who can commit to their project, my friends have decided to hire offshore developers, which…
-
Starting a new software project? Don’t start coding right away.
It’s always fun to start a new project. I should know; I’ve been a consultant since 1995, and have started hundreds of projects of various shapes and sizes. It’s tempting, when I first meet a new client and come to an agreement, to dive right into the code, and start trying to solve their problems.…
-
If you build it, they will come — but they might hate you
Several months ago, I was teaching an introductory Python course, and I happened to mention the fact that I use Git for all of my version-control needs. I think that I would have gotten a more positive response if I had told them that my hobby is kicking puppies. The reactions were roughly — and…
-
Good intentions, unexpected results: Mailing lists and DMARC
If there’s anything that software people know, it’s that changing one part of a program can result in a change in a seemingly unrelated part of the program. That’s why automated testing is so powerful; it can show you when you have made a mistake that you not only didn’t intend, but that you didn’t…