In the organisation where I am employed there is a dual, almost schizophrenic, nature to the work that I (and the other software engineers in my team) do there. Our funding comes from several sources, but a large portion comes from academic research councils. The nature of this funding is that it involves short-term projects… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Software engineering
Why I love Google Maps
I spend a lot of my time working with and developing Geographic Information software, especially graphical mapping applications. Recently I have been working a lot with the mapping data and JavaScript API provided by the Google Maps service, and I am very impressed with it. It’s very simple to use, and makes adding mapping capabilities… Read more »
The 80:20 and POGE software engineering rules
There is a well-known ratio in engineering; 80:20. This ratio crops up in software engineering too and refers to several rules-of-thumb that sound a bit flippant but in my experience are valuable real-world guides when managing software development projects. This is also called the ‘Pareto Principle‘.
In defence of Cowboy Coding
At the organisation where I am a software engineer, discussions and debates about software development methodologies and tools (such as UML, Agile, XP etc) has gone on for a long time. There is a general feeling that these are a Good Idea, and that we should embrace them, but variety and complexity seem to be… Read more »
When Java goes wrong
In the software team where I work there is a strong focus on using Java as the language of choice for building web-based applications. Now, Java has many strengths. In an environment where many software engineers are working on the same code, and the purpose of that code is to interface with diverse data sources… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive