Are you new to testing? Read my Introduction to Testing article first. It used to be that the only kind of testing on a product was human testing. Software companies hired Quality Assurance (QA) people to be a part of every product team, and it was their job to act like a user of the product […]
What You Might Not Understand About Software Testing
As you build out your project, one of the decisions you’ll make every day is what kind of testing you should do, and how much of it there should be. You might think “That’s a question best answered by the development team”, but the potential impact on your business of getting this wrong can be […]
Avoiding a Hostage Crisis with a Contractor
Disclosure: None of the following should be considered legal advice. You should consult an attorney for any and all legal matters If you’re new here, I’d recommend that you start here and read about why I’m sharing all of my learnings on building technology products. If you’re not familiar with the concept of source code and how […]
How Source Code Control Works
If you’re new here, I’d recommend that you start here and read about why I’m sharing all of my learnings on building technology products. You’ve got your team of developers ready to get going on the new project. One of the first things they ask you to do is set up an account on Github for […]
How to Choose A Development Language
Whether you’ve got a technical co-founder or you’re hiring an outside firm for developing your product, one of the first decisions you’ll have to make is what language(s) your product will be built in. Sometimes these decisions are made for you, as is the case for any of the mobile platforms. However, if your product […]
Build Fireproof Technology Products
How I Got to Now I came out of college in the 90’s with an accounting and finance degree, and no real love for computers or technology. It didn’t take long, however, to figure out that the internet was where the future was, and I needed to get involved. I did everything I could possibly […]
Software Development Lessons from Pixar
I came across this article on First Round about the similarities between making movies and building software at Pixar and wanted to call out a couple of things that I found really interesting. Transparency We also had a “story room” that contained all of these storyboards up on the walls, encompassing the design for the entire system […]
Programming by teaching – Dr. Guillaume Bouchard
The future of programming is not teaching everyone how to code, which is the current and popular path. The future of programming is, I am convinced, teaching computers how to better understand human instruction. It is the only way to scale creativity and progress quickly enough. In the video below, Dr. Guillaume Bouchard talks about […]
Faster Software Development
If you’re building software and you’ve got a decision to make about how you run your organization, or what technology you might want to use, the very first question you should ask is: Will it make us faster while not sacrificing essential quality? Every Decision Matters Over the past eight months I’ve had the […]