There is a well-known ratio in engineering; 80:20. This ratio crops up in software engineering too and refers to several rules-of-thumb that sound a bit flippant but in my experience are valuable real-world guides when managing software development projects. This is also called the ‘Pareto Principle‘.
Posts By: Eddie
In defence of Cowboy Coding
At the organisation where I am a software engineer, discussions and debates about software development methodologies and tools (such as UML, Agile, XP etc) has gone on for a long time. There is a general feeling that these are a Good Idea, and that we should embrace them, but variety and complexity seem to be… Read more »
Ben Starav
Yesterday I climbed to the summit of Ben Starav, in Glen Etive, at 1078m (photographs here). The walk starts at sea level and goes straight up to the summit via a 3km rocky ridge, so is a relatively hard slog. I’d tried to get to the top of this mountain two years ago, in January… Read more »
When Java goes wrong
In the software team where I work there is a strong focus on using Java as the language of choice for building web-based applications. Now, Java has many strengths. In an environment where many software engineers are working on the same code, and the purpose of that code is to interface with diverse data sources… Read more »
Safety in the mountains
There’s been a lot of talk on the news recently about safety in the mountains, prompted by several deaths in the past few months in the Coire an t-Sneachda area of the Cairngorm mountains. Yes, there’s no question that people die in the Scottish mountains, especially in winter, and even if they have all the… Read more »
Spammers and hackers
I’m currently taking a detailed a look at what it means to make a website completely ‘secure’. This is a bit of an unattainable concept really, given that there are so many hackers and spammers out there, and there are so many ways they can cause havoc. However, there are a few basic things that… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive