Author Archives: Robert

Jeff Atwood blew up the Internet today by making the statement that not everyone should learn to program. I think maybe one of the biggest complaints here is that his arguments read as elitist, and exclusionary, whereas the real kernel … Continue reading »

I’m proud to announce that the search solution and interface I’ve been working on at Wikia is now live! This introduces a new UI, grouped inter-wiki search for the global site, and improved relevance. If you’re curious about more details, … Continue reading »

Maybe I don’t advertise it much on my website, but I’m a total nerd about hip hop music. A proficient stalker may have noticed my over-analytical writings over on Rap Wiki. Anyone unacquainted might enjoy my contributions to the pages … Continue reading »

Written in response to PHP: A Fractal of Bad Design. English speakers: please try not to take this personally. You’re in awful company. Preface I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of … Continue reading »

So I’ve been a little quiet on this blog lately. I’ve been busy devoting a lot of my free time to some interesting contracting opportunities. I’m currently working with Time Doctor, LLC, a company working on the sites TimeDoctor.com and … Continue reading »

A service-level agreement is a useful method for setting expectations on deliverability, and incentivizing quick turnaround. It’s also a great way to motivate a development team. SLAs encourage goal-setting and collective buy-in internally. They improve your users’ perception of your … Continue reading »

I work in the Bay Area at a company based out of the Washington, DC area. I lead a development team with the manpower roughly divided between both offices. On top of that, we have certain stakeholders that work in … Continue reading »

When it comes to “The Real World”, one of my biggest learning experiences was getting fired from a temp job at a Verizon Wireless store the summer before grad school.

Adding a change log to your database is the best way to make sure you’re working on a version of your web application that adequately reflects a given state of your product. However, when working with a branching-and-merging development environment, … Continue reading »