Call me pedantic, but I can be a stickler for standardized naming conventions. Whether it’s application code, database objects, documentation, or other digital assets, I find a tremendous amount of value in establishing a set pattern for naming and formatting. Especially for organizations with a large digital landscape, having a documented and agreed-upon standard for object names can make developers…
Yesterday I wrote about best practices, illustrating that what may be an assumed technical design standard doesn’t fit every scenario. In a similar vein, I believe that consistency often trumps what are considered to be best practices. In this post, I’ll share some thoughts on the value of consistent design. The “Right Way” to Solve a Problem When I began…
Humans are creatures of habit, and I suspect that engineering/technical types are even more so. We find something that works and tend to stick with it, sometimes neglecting to occasionally experiment with new tools or methods. The mantra of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” becomes the defense for standing by what we know works just fine. There is…
I’m a fixer. A tinkerer. As a kid, I would take my toys apart just to see how they worked, and to prove that I could put them back together again (and these experiments often had mixed results). Even today, I’m still kind of a shade tree handyman. In fact, earlier this week I had to fix a broken safety…