The Left Field
by Sean McGrath

Sean has a reputation for a take on technology that can seem to be "out of left field," but is guaranteed to get you thinking. Sometimes contrarian, always insightful, he offers a unique perspective on the practice of programming and on technology in general.

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Implement first, design later

If I were to utter the two words "implementation" and "design" in the context of an IT project, would you be inclined to re-order them in your head? I.e. to think in terms of "design" first and "implementation" second?

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1 comment
8I like it!

Pet Peeves - English

A while back I wrote an article about my pet peeves related to XML. Some time soon I hope to write something similar related to my other main weapon of choice, namely, Python. Before that though, I thought it might be interesting to think about the peeve that relates the two.

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2 comments
27I like it!

Open Source Considered Harmful

Maybe it is just me but gosh, the unrelenting rate of change, of the rate of change, in IT is becoming brain frazzling. As soon as I think I have a handle on where things are currently at, along comes some new complex twist; some new turn; some new innovation that threatens to take the status quo and put it through the wood chipper.

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1 comment
8I like it!

Better regulation through software

There is a lot of talk these days about regulation, especially the kind intended to control the activities of financial organizations. I have a big problem with regulation.

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1 comment
3I like it!

Technology - rent, lease or buy?

We live in interesting economic times. I could also say that we live in interesting technological times but that is always true so it doesn't need to be explicitly spelled out. The worlds of economics and technology are deeply inter-twingled of course and getting more so with every passing year.

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1 comment
21I like it!

Pet Peeves - XML

Pet peeves about XML from a self-confessed XML fanboy.

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2 comments
16I like it!

Premature parameterization is the square root of all evil

Almost all software - regardless of its function in life - involves using computer code to operate on data. Sometimes (rarely) there is no data at all. Sometimes (not so rarely these days) the data is, itself, code.

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2 comments
5I like it!

RAM was the new disk - and it will be again

Using RAM as fast disk is not a new idea. It is an old idea that will come again.

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1 comment
5I like it!

Emotionally yours

All around me I see tech savvy kids that are growing up as brand consumers...What will the world of branding be like when these kids get old enough and empowered enough to raise purchase orders for the enterprise IT systems?

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2 comments
21I like it!

Knowing Java is not knowing much

Knowing Java is not knowing much. Knowing C is not knowing much. Same for Javascript ECMA 262. The same is true for many other languages. Not all of them, but many of them.

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