RSS feed for InstantSpot site Sam Farmer's ColdFusion Blog

Why I Use Instantspot aka My Decision to Use Not Just Write Software

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:29:00 GMT

A little before I started this blog I realized I did not use web software for anything important to me. Sure, I used web mail (both GMail and Yahoo Mail) and paid bills online and read alot online but there was nothing really important to me that I used the web for.

At the same time I had just started with Interfolio and my salary became dependent on people wanting to pay for our software and services so it seemed that I should do likewise. As I am not applying to college I could not really eat my own dog food but I knew a blog would have be important to me and I if I could I would constantly tweak it. I decided to go with a hosting service.

So I picked Instantspot because of its features but also because I wanted to experience the joy, the frustration and all the other feelings of using software. Fortunately Instantspot is pretty damn good so I have way more joy than frustration but there are definitely times when I have thought, "with x tag or function I could tweak y to do z". I know at some point I would have tried to incorporate AJAX comments on my own blog. Instead I have tried to provide constructive feedback from time to time to Dave and Aaron.

Overall, not being able to do tweak my own blog and to experience using web software has been a very good thing for me.

A quick word on Instantspot 2: Its very good and the use of AJAX done in a very thoughtful way. If you would like an Instantspot invite let me know in the comments or use the Contact Form on the right. I have 5 to give out.

A quick word on the new look: I created the image with ColdFusion and reflected it with a function writen by Dave Ferguson. Thanks Dave!

Joel, in Person, on his Software

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:09:24 GMT

Joel Spolsky brought his FogBugz tour to the DC area on Tuesday to demo the latest version of Fogbugz and talk about software. Before it started the omens where good; the guy in front of me walking in had a CFUnited backpack on and the audio system was playing the Dave Matthews Band.

Fogbugz 6 brings two new features to the product; a wiki and Evidence-Based Scheduling in an effort to change Fogbugz from a bug tracking tool to a "complete project management system". I don't, however, want to give a review of the product but rather give my impressions on what Joel Spolsky said about software and Fogbugz. Some notes;

- The idea behind Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS) is an intriguing one; take existing data of how accurate a developers task estimates are versus actual task time, weigh it over time and then use it to give a probability of project ship dates from 0% to 100% chance. Having seen, and worked with, gant charts and other such things with varied success this certainly seems an approach that is worth a shot. Most of the discussion centered around this new feature and it provided an insight into Joel's philosophy on developers.

- Joel does not believe in project plans where task 71 is dependent on and can not start until task 62 is complete. Software is not like constructing a building and good developers will go ahead and create a fake query or put in place some scaffolding if a dependent task is not fully complete.

- From Joel's experience it takes a developer about 6 months to get accurate in estimating.

- Always estimate in the powers of 2; 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 16 hours. Anything higher than this and way too much is going on. I've heard this elsewhere and been using it as a guide for a while and it works well although I have never estimated a task for 2 days.

- Some in the crowd seemed to want to use the tool to find those responsible for failure or get rid of bad developers. It was clear that Joel thinks in a different way. He is not interested in blame but rather helping the struggling developer become a great developer. All through Fogbugz there is a sense of trust of the developer.

Joel is a very good speaker and has many insights into developing good software. Even if you are not interested in Fogbugz I would still suggest going to hear him speak or read his blog.

The First Post

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:59:53 GMT

The first post. I've decided to start a blog primarily because I like writing. And having been a programmer for the last 10 years I haven't written much during that time. I also realize I like writing about technical issues and have a fair amount on my mind at the moment so it seems like a good time to start a blog. Note, I did not say I was a grammatically correct writer. So, expect the odd typo and grammatically incorrect sentence from time to time. This is a blog and I'm not going to use the grammar corrector in Word before posting.

I am also intrigued by social networking so InstantSpot seemed a good spot (pun intended) to start my blog.

I aim to cover a bunch of topics, some tutorials and explanations of basic ColdFusion functionality, thoughts on the future of the web and ColdFusion, conferences, and anything else that comes up. I will mostly be focusing on ColdFusion (and will probably start using cf as an abbreviation real soon) though I do hope to post on other non-cf topics like JavaScript, MySQL and databases in general and who knows what else in the future.

I am not going to aim to publish on a regular basis and have pledged to keep this blog a purely non-work time activity. I'm busy enough there anyway. Good busy. I also don't believe blogs die. So if I have nothing good or interesting to say I will say nothing. I also don't think this will turn into a news blog with short entries and links to the latest news. There are enough of those, and, I rely on them for my tech-news as much as anywhere else. In short, if you like what you are reading I suggest using the RSS feeds or subscribing over email.

More to come...