I enjoyed the expensify article.

There seem to be quite a few articles emerging along similar lines. Some of the articles I've seen advocating a slimmed down architecture sized for...

Try Oracle licensing and you will never complain about Microsoft licensing ever again.

I...

Terry Pratchett described how the city of Ankh Morpork dealt with a plague of rats by paying a bounty on dead rats delivered. Despite this the rat problem kept...

Over the years I have had to learn a bit about most things and although some things really weren't my boat I benefitted. This was because they gave context...

I read a blog post about a bloke in a coffee shop who was approached by an old man who turned out to have been one of the most important...

Gary Varga (10/28/2016)

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I really enjoy utilising new technology but as a mature developer I have one fundamental question when a team (including me) wants to roll out new tech:

After the...

I've learned to ask why a particular response occurs and to keep drilling down until I get to the root cause. In architecture this is called the five whys.

Why...

I worked at one place that had an "AS-LIVE" environment. It was an exact copy of the LIVE environment as it was two weeks ago. It was accessible...

Jeff, I feel your pain. I wish I could buy you a pint and share some war stories.

I've been having thoughts about schema-on-read systems. See what you think.

The writing...

The "team" is a fractal. Yes it means those in charge of the product but it also means that product is part of a wider team.

In terms of managers...

"Conflict" is one of those words that can be misconstrued so easily.

Technically a disagreement is a conflict but it's using a strong word where a quieter word will do.

In the...

Safari Books Online is my big spend until my PC goes bang.

I treated myself to a 2nd 24" monitor.

To be honest, I don't spend money on tech until the old...

"Production" is a bit more nuanced than it used to be.

Would I endorse data scientists conducting experiments on a DB server providing critical services? NO.

Would I provide them with...

What impresses me is when Teradata was formed, what they set out to do and when they achieved it! 1992!

I was installing 20mb Western Digital file cards into...

I find that I rarely do things just once therefore scripting is my normal approach.

You can share a script and learn from one. A well written one has a...