I came across an interesting problem this week. The requirement was to get row counts from two different tables and return these on the same row. The tables had a common column, lets call it category. The first thought was to use GROUP BY in T-SQL, but there is a problem with this: SELECT a.Category, […]
Today, at a project review meeting, a customer said in no uncertain terms, that fewer, more expert developers are better than a team of devs all with just a couple of years of experience. I was very pleased about this, because this is something I strongly believe, and in this case, a good part of […]
Should software ever be re-written? Technology is always changing, new versions of development tools, databases, third party components continually appear. In fact about ten years ago somebody said it was a full time job just to keep up with the new tools coming out of Microsoft. If anything in recent years, especially with the advent […]
Learn six ways effective product owners ensure their teams’ success. [...]
Succeeding with Scrum is easier when you know when and why to conduct each of the Scrum events during the sprint. [...]
Story points are perhaps the most misunderstood topic in agile. Story points are not based on just one factor--such as complexity, as is often mistakenly claimed. Instead, story points are based on a combination of factors. [...]
I’ve been quite adamant lately that story points are about time, specifically effort. But that does not mean you should say something like, “One story point = eight hours.” Doing this obviates the main reason to use story points in the... [...]
I've been getting more and more emails lately from people confused about the difference between "user stories", "epics" and "features." So I thought this month we'd return and cover some basic--but very helpful--territory by explaining those terms. First, the terms don't matter that much. These are not terms with important specific meanings like "pointer" to a programmer or "collateralized debt obligation" to whomever it is that's important. [...]
Mastodon is a free, open-source social networking service that is decentralized and distributed. It was created in 2016 as an alternative to centralized social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. One of the key features of Mastodon is the use of the WebFinger protocol, which allows users to discover and access information about other users on the Mastodon network. WebFinger is a simple HTTP-based protocol that enables a user to discover information about other users or resources on the internet by using their email address or other identifying information. The WebFinger protocol is important for Mastodon because it enables… [...]
I have been blogging here for the last 20 years. Every Tuesday and Thursday, quite consistently, for two decades. But last year, without planning it, I got tired and stopped. Not sure why. It didn't correspond with any life events. Nothing interesting or notable happened. I just stopped. I did find joy on TikTok and amassed a small group of like-minded followers there. I enjoy my YouTube as well, and my weekly podcast is going strong with nearly 900 (!) episodes of interviews with cool people. I've also recently started posting on Mastodon (a fediverse (federated universe)) Twitter alternative that… [...]
I am not a Home Assistant expert, but it's clearly a massive and powerful ecosystem. I've interviewed the creator of Home Assistant on my podcast and I encourage you to check out that chat. Home Assistant can quickly become a hobby that overwhelms you. Every object (entity) in your house that is even remotely connected can become programmable. Everything. Even people! You can declare that any name:value pair that (for example) your phone can expose can be consumable by Home Assistant. Questions like "is Scott home" or "what's Scott's phone battery" can be associated with Scott the Entity in the… [...]
I was reading Gabby's blog post about the new TypeScript/JavaScript project experience in Visual Studio 2022. You should read the docs on JavaScript and TypeScript in Visual Studio 2022. If you're used to ASP.NET apps when you think about apps that are JavaScript heavy, "front end apps" or TypeScript focused, it can be confusing as to "where does .NET fit in?" You need to consider the responsibilities of your various projects or subsystems and the multiple totally valid ways you can build a web site or web app. Let's consider just a few: An ASP.NET Web app that renders HTML… [...]
I've talked about how I love a nice pretty prompt in my Windows Terminal and made videos showing in detail how to do it. I've also worked with my buddy TooTallNate to put my real-time blood sugar into a bash or PowerShell prompt, but this was back in 2017. Now that I'm "Team OhMyPosh" I have been meaning to write a Nightscout "segment" for my prompt. Nightscout is an open source self-hosted (there are commercial hosts also like T1Pal) website and API for remote display of real-time and near-real-time glucose readings for Diabetics like myself. Since my body has an… [...]
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