Working Code

This week, the crew meets to finish their review of Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert Martin (aka, "Uncle Bob"). This book is filled with so much thought-provoking information that it took us two episodes to get through it! And, while some of the practices in the book didn't quite connect with the programming languages that we use or the types of applications that we build, our general consensus is that most of the suggestions in this book are spot-on.

All-in-all, I'd say that our first attempt at a book review was a smashing success!

Triumphs & Failures

• Adam's Triumph - He took a SQL query that was running for over 3-minutes, refactored it, and brought the execution time down to 30 milliseconds. For those of you following along at home, that's a "4 orders of magnitude" improvement! There's nothing quite as thrilling as query optimization! But, anytime you get to describe an improvement in terms of "orders of magnitude", you are already winning!
• Ben's Triumph - After spending weeks of his personal time building a ColdFusion custom tag DSL (Domain Specific Language) for generating HTML emails; and, then using said DSL in a company Hackathon to rebuild a bevy of transactional emails; he finally starting applying the approach at work! And, it's all going very smoothly!
• Carol's Failure - She was so focused on putting together the mother's day plans (for her mothers) that she completely forgot that her son was coming home from his Freshman year of college. So, instead of going to get him, he had to rely on his friends (and their parents) to help him move back home. Of course, isn't a big part of going to college all about becoming more independent and self-reliant?
• Tim's Failure - He is terrible at negotiating. And, the very act of "countering" an offer makes him feel like a bad person. In a contentious situation, his primary goal is to figure out exactly what he can say to bring the situation to an end. This is something he always wishes he was better at.

Notes & Links

• Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In - Offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict.
• Never Split the Difference - A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations.

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